Tiiiiti 



J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ! 



J7£o// ,£.:,i. 

UNITED STATES OP AMERICA, f 



i 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 



CONSIDERATIONS 



ADDRESSED 



TO THE UNBELIEVER, 



TO YOUNG MEN, 



AND TO MEN OF THE WORLD; 



THIE INTRODTJCTOBY ESSAY 



' DODDRIDGE'S RISE AKD PROGRESS OF RELIGION IN THE SOUL.' 

BY' JOHN FOSTEE, : iJ^AJL , ^ 

AUTHOR OF "ESSATS OX DECISION OF CHARACTEr.," ETC. 



PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM COLLINS, 
© 
)UTH FREDERICK STREET, GLASGOW, 
AND PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 
C 



<1* 



ADVEBTISEMENT. 



The Publisher of Mr. Foster's Introductory Essay 
to Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the 
Soul, having been frequently solicited to publish that 
admirable Treatise in a separate form, has been 
induced to comply with the wishes of many of the 
Author's friends. The present Edition is therefore 
presented in the form in which most of his Works 
have been recently published, that the admirers of 
this distinguished Author may obtain this Treatise 
uniform with his other Works. This much admired 
Essay has always been regarded as one of the ablest 
and most instructive of Mr. Foster's productions, and 
it has already obtained a large circulation in connec- 
tion with Doddridge's excellent Work. In the present 
Edition the Essay has been divided into Chapters, to 
mark off with greater distinctness the different lead- 
ing subjects, and to indicate, more particularly, the 
various classes of persons to whom the Author's so- 
lemn and impressive considerations, on the momen- 
tous concerns of Religion, are more specially ad- 
dressed. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Reflections which the diversified subjects of books sug- 
gest to the thoughtful mind, and on the influence which 
the character of Authors, especially of Religious Books, 
exerts on the perusal of their writings, 9 

CHAPTER II. 

Considerations addressed to the unbeliever in Revealed 
Religion on the folly of rejecting Divine Revelation and 
the blessings which Christianity offers to the world, . 32 

CHAPTER III. 

Considerations addressed to Young Persons on the duty 
and advantages of early piety, and on the fatal danger 
of procrastination and of neglecting the momentous con- 
cerns of Religion in youth, 54 

CHAPTER IV. 

Considerations addressed to men of the world on the dan- 
ger of a too exclusive devotedness to business and other 
worldly pursuits to the neglect of the great and para- 
mount interests of Religion, Ill 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 



CHAPTER L 

REFLECTIONS WHICH THE DIVERSIFIED SUBJECTS OF 
BOOKS SUGGEST TO THE THOUGHTFUL MIND, AND 
ON THE INFLUENCE WHICH THE CHARACTER OF AU- 
THORS, ESPECIALLY OF RELIGIOUS BOOKS, EXERTS 
ON THE PERUSAL OF THEIR WRITINGS. 

THERE are more ways to derive instruction 
from books than the direct and chief one 
of applying the attention to what they contain. 
Things connected with them, by natural or cas- 
ual association, will sometimes suggest them- 
selves to a reflective and imaginative reader, and 
divert him into secondary trains of ideas. In 
these, the mind may, indeed, float along in per- 
fect indolence, and acquire no good ; but a seri- 
ous disposition might regulate them to a profit- 
able result. 

Of these extraneous ideas, the most obviously 
occurring, as being the most directly associated 



10 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

with the book, may be some recollections or 
conjectures concerning the author. Perhaps the 
most remarkable circumstances of his life, and 
qualities of his character, are well known. Some 
of these may come on the reader's mind, sus- 
pend his attention to the written thoughts, and 
draw him away into meditation on the person, 
perhaps now no longer on earth, who once 
thought them, and deliberately put them in the 
words just seen on the page. 

And the reminiscences, which thus bring what 
the author was into conjunction with what he 
has written, display the relation between them, 
greatly varying in character in the different in- 
stances. The book, we will suppose, teaches 
genuine wisdom, and forcibly inculcates the best 
principles ; and it may be that the author is re- 
membered or recorded to have been worthy of 
his doctrine, an example of the virtues of which 
we are admiring him as the advocate, and one 
of the excellent of the earth. In this case we 
have a pleasing reflection from his character 
shed on his pages. It is the whole man, faith- 
fully affirming to us, with his heart and life, all 
that his language expresses in testimony to truth 
and goodness. The living spirit and practice 
of the man have left an evidence and a power 
to animate these sentences of the now silent 
instructor. If, at this happy departure, his 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 11 

"works followed him," they still also follow his 
words. And thus the reader feels the benefit 
of that principle of association by which his 
thoughts, at some moments, pass from the writ- 
ing to the author. 

But a very different case is too possible, in 
which a dark haunting of the author's memory 
shall at times cast a shade over sentences bright 
with intelligence, strong in the assertion, per- 
haps in the vindication, of important principles 
of truth and virtue, and expressed with all the 
appearance of sincere respect for them. The 
idea of him may intervene with the effect of a 
counteracting malignant genius, to blast the 
fairest, and enervate the strongest, forms of 
thought which he has presented to please and 
instruct us. They cannot speak to us without 
our seeming to hear an under voice, as if mock- 
ing the attention and complacency which we are 
beginning to give to them. There may have 
been left such memorials of the author's cha- 
racter, as to force upon us a doubt whether he 
was honest in what he wrote ; whether the prin- 
ciples which he displayed so much ability in 
maintaining were his own sincere convictions. 
Or, where there may not be cause for so grave a 
suspicion, it may be too probable or evident that 
his exertions were applied in a mere professional 
capacity, on a calculation of distinction and ad- 



12 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

vancement, and without any cordial sense of the 
value of truth. Or, while we may be convinced 
that we are reading the honest dictates of his 
judgment, and that he did really feel, at the 
time of writing, a concern about their applica- 
tion to his own conduct, we may have the mor- 
tification to know that the tenor of his life, or 
many circumstances in it, were in melancholy 
contrariety to his book. It is even related of a 
man of genius, of dissipated habits, that he pub- 
lished a book of piety, written by him in perfect 
good faith, and for the very purpose of imposing 
a restraint on his own follies and vices, by this 
expedient of combining with the testimony of 
his conscience, a formal pledge to the public, — 
and that he did it in vain. 

This dark obtrusion of the author's character 
may tend, in its immediate effect, to lessen the 
force of the sentiments and arguments by which 
he seemed to be training us to right judgment 
and practice. If a man who could think with 
such clear intelligence, could reason so convin- 
cingly, could estimate the quality of things, as it 
would appear to us, so impartially and justly, 
and could advise and inculcate with such gravity, 
and semblance of being in earnest, — if such a 
man might, nevertheless, be even sceptical re- 
specting the very principles which he seems to 
prove, or might, while believing them, maintain 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 13 

them with no better intention than that of mak- 
ing a display of his ability, in order to advance 
himself in fame or lucre, or might feel a sincere 
esteem for the truths and precepts which he 
taught, and yet allow himself to act in flagrant 
violation of them, — can there be any real autho- 
rity, any solid importance in the instructions we 
are receiving from his book ? But this inaus- 
picious relation of the author to his writings 
may turn to the reader's benefit, if he will be 
quite serious. It will force on his view another 
exposure and exemplification of the sad disorder 
into which our nature has fallen ; it will show 
him of how little avail is a mere intellectual ex- 
ercise of the mind on important truth ; and how 
much more is indispensable to the salutary effect 
of right principles than a bare assent of the 
judgment, however decided. It will admonish 
him that the efficacy of truth depends on a ha- 
bitual communication of the soul with the 
God of truth. He has the author revisiting him, 
as from the dead, to apprise him by example, 
that truths the most important may pass in the 
train of his thoughts, or may be retained in his 
judgment as his fixed opinions, all in vain, un- 
less they be brought and kept in contact with 
his conscience, and his conscience be kept habi- 
tually reverent to the Supreme Authority. And 
shall our Lord's declaration respecting a real 



14 REFLECTIONS WHICH TnE 

intervention of one from the departed be verified 
in this case too ; so that it shall be entirely un- 
availing for this gloomy apparition to the reader's 
mind, to warn him against trifling with the seri- 
ous instructions in the book, as he that wrote 
them had trifled, and adding one more to the 
number of those who have deliberately gone the 
way to ruin, bearing a lamp lighted by heaven 
in their hand ?■ 

This representation of the secondary advan- 
tage derivable from books supposes them to be 
read. But, even in the most cursory notice of 
them, when the attention is engaged by no one 
in particular, ideas may be started of a tendency 
not wholly foreign to instruction. A reflective 
person, in his library, in some hour of intermit- 
ted application, when the mind is surrendered to 
vagrant musing, may glance along the ranges of 
volumes with a slight recognition of the authors, 
in long miscellaneous array of ancients and mo- 
derns. And that musing may become shaped 
into ideas like these : — What a number of our 
busy race have deemed themselves capable of 
informing and directing the rest of mankind ! 
How many who were powerful in thought, or 
laborious in research, have had their brief sea- 
son under the sun, have attained their respec- 
tive shares of influence and fame, and are now 
no longer on earth ! What a vast amount is 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 15 

collected here of the results of the most strenu- 
ous and protracted exertions of so many minds ! 
What were in each of these claimants, that the 
world should think as they did, the most prevail- 
ing motives? How many of them sincerely 
loved truth, honestly sought it, and faithfully, to 
the best of their knowledge, declared it? "What 
might be the circumstances and influences which 
determined in the case of that one author, and 
the next, and the next again, their own modes 
of opinion ? How many of them were aware, 
and acted on the conviction, of the importance 
of a devout intercourse with heaven in order to 
their being truly wise themselves, and to their 
being the successful teachers of wisdom ? How 
many of them were actuated by a genuine de- 
sire to benefit their fellow-mortals ? What may 
be conjectured as to the degree of complacency 
with which many of them have since, in a state 
where they better knew the truth of things, and 
better knew themselves, regarded the spirit in 
which they speculated, and the tendency of what 
they left to speak in their name, after they were 
gone ? 

And how much have they actually done for 
truth and righteousness in the world ? Do not 
the contents of these accumulated volumes con- 
stitute a chaos of all discordant and contradic- 
tory principles, theories, representations of facts, 



16 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

and figurings of imagination ? Could I not in- 
stantly place beside each other the works of two 
noted authors, who maintain for truth, directly 
opposite doctrines, or systems of doctrine ; and 
then add a third book which explodes them 
both ? I can take some one book, in which the 
prime spirits of the world, through all time, are 
brought together, announcing the speculations 
which they, respectively, proclaimed to be the 
essence of all wisdom, protesting with solemn 
censure, or sneering contempt, against the dog- 
mas and theories of one another, and conflicting 
in a huge Babel of all imaginable opinions and 
vagaries. 1 Within these assembled volumes, how 
many errors in doctrine may there not be main- 
tained ; how many bad practical principles pal- 
liated, justified, or displayed in seductive exem- 
plification ; how many good ones endeavoured to 
be supplanted ; how many absurdities and vain 
fancies set forth in plausible colours ! Is it not 
as if the intellect of man had been surrendered 
to be the sport of some malicious and powerful 
spiritual agent, who could delight in playing it 
through all traverses, freaks, and mazes of fan- 
tastic movement, mocking at its self-importance, 
diverted at its follies, gratified most of all when 
it is perverted to the greatest mischief; and ma- 
lignantly providing for the perpetuation of the 

1 For example, the work of Brucker. 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 17 

effect of all this, through subsequent time, by 
instigating the ablest of the minds thus sported 
with, to keep their own perversions in operation 
on posterity through the instrumentality of their 
books ? If such a thing might be as the inter- 
vention of the agency of a better and more po- 
tent intelligence, to cause, by one instantaneous 
action on all those books, the obliteration of all 
that is fallacious, pernicious, or useless in them, 
what millions of pages would be blanched in our 
crowded libraries ! 

The man who is supposed to be thoughtfully 
passing his eye over a large array of books, may 
make such reflections without being guilty of 
arrogance. It is not supposed that he can be 
intimately acquainted with the contents of the 
majority of them, or that he is assuming to be 
the infallible judge how much might justly be 
doomed to oblivion in those which he has exam- 
ined. But being apprised, in a general way, of 
the qualities of a large proportion of them ; hav- 
ing learned something of the characters of many 
of the authors ; and to what class or party, or 
school, to what faith, or in some instances no 
faith, to what prevailing system of an age or 
nation, or to what singularities of opinion, they 
were severally addicted, he necessarily knows 
that the multifarious collection contains innu- 
merable things at variance with intellectual and 

B 



18 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

moral rectitude. He knows, that if each author 
had one living disciple wholly obsequious to him, 
and if all these disciples could be brought toge- 
ther, there would be a company in which almost 
every error of the human understanding, and 
every wrong disposition and practice would have 
an advocate. 

Such ideas, arising in the exterior survey of 
the works of so many intellects, may yield some 
instruction to a reflective man. While the 
swarm of notions and conceits of fancy comes 
upon his mental sight thick and tumultuous, 
and as lawlessly capricious in their shapes as the 
imps figured as thronging about the magician, 
he may reflect what the reason of man, which 
should have been the light and glory of such a 
creature of God, has become, and become cap- 
able of procluciug, through some disastrous lapse 
into disorder. He may consider what the ra- 
tional faculty has been, and would ever be, in 
the absence of divine revelation ; and also what 
necessity there is for a corrective and regulating 
influence from above on the mind, if, notwith- 
standing that revelation, it can have wantoned 
into so many aberrations. It will be shown him 
under what ill omens he will apply himself to 
the study of the most important subjects, with- 
out simplicity in his motives, and a conscienti- 
ous care of the procedure of his judgment. He 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 19 

may think, and deplore to think, what mischief 
may have sprung from the intellectual obliquity, 
the pride, the turpitude, the irreligion, or even 
the carelessness of one mind of great powers of 
seduction. He may be mortified to see how 
folly can link itself to intelligence, as if to expose 
it to scorn, while he reflects how many men of 
superior intellect, who therefore ought not to 
have been the dupes of a phantasm, have been 
impelled to the most intense exertion by the pas- 
sion to be renowned in this world, where they 
were to stay so short a time — to be renowned in 
it, even after they should have passed away be- 
yond the possible enjoyment of their fame : and 
a sentiment of mingled contempt and pity will 
arise. at the failure of these anticipations in the 
case of some of them, whose earnest indefatigable 
labours have barely preserved their names from 
oblivion. While his look is arrested by the 
Works of some of those of highest distinction, 
splendid in literary achievement and lasting 
fame, it may be suggested to his thoughts, with 
respect to one of them and another, whether, on 
a Christian estimate of things, he would be de- 
liberately willing, were it possible, to shine in 
all that splendour in his own and a succeeding 
age, on the condition of being just of the same 
spirit toward God and the best interests of man- 
kind, as those celebrated men. While pronoun- 



20 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

ring their names and looking at these volumes, 
in which they have left a representative exist- 
ence on earth, left the form and action of their 
minds embodied in a more durable vehicle than 
their once animated clay, how striking to think, 
that somewhere, and in some certain condition, 
they themselves are existing still — existing as 
really and personally as when they were revolv- 
ing the thoughts and writing the sentences which 
fill these books ! From the character of these 
images of their minds, these enshrined statues, 
created to receive homage for them after they 
are gone, what may be deemed of their present 
condition elsewhere ? The musing of our con- 
templatist may at times be led to solemn conjec- 
tures at the award which these great intellectual 
performers have found in another state ; and he 
follows some of them with a very dark surmise. 
His eye may rest on a book inscribed with a 
name far less " proudly eminent " in the honours 
of genius and talent, but a work which has un- 
questionably done very great and almost unmix- 
ed good. And he may be reminded of that 
sovereignty of the Governor of the world in his 
selection and appointment, by which minds 
greatly below the highest order of natural abi- 
lity may be rendered pre-eminent in usefulness. 
It may also occur to him, diverting for an in- 
stant from all the ranks and varieties of those 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 21 

who have aspired to be teachers of mankind, to 
reflect how many humble spirits, that never at- 
tempted any of the thousand speculations, nor 
revelled in the literary luxuries contained in these 
books, have nevertheless passed worthily and 
happily through the world into a region where 
it may be the appointed result and reward of 
fervent piety, in inferior faculties, to overtake, 
by one mighty bound, the intellectual magnitude 
of those who had previously been much more 
powerful minds. And finally, when he has such 
evidence that this world has been always a tene- 
brious and illusory scene, for the search after 
truth by a spiritual nature itself weak, perverted, 
and obscured, he may surely feel some aspira- 
tions awakened toward that other world, where 
the objects of intelligence will be unvailed to 
faculties rectified and nobly enlarged for their 
contemplation. 

Thus far the instructive reflections which even 
the mere exterior of an accumulation of books 
may suggest, are supposed to occur in the way 
of thinking of the authors. But the same books 
may also excite some interesting ideas, through 
their less obvious but not altogether fanciful as- 
sociation with the persons who may have been 
their readers or possessors. The mind of a 
thoughtful looker over a range of volumes, of 



22 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

many dates, and a considerable portion of them 
old, will sometimes be led into a train of con- 
jectural questions: — Who were they, that, in 
various times and places, have had these in their 
possession ? Perhaps many hands have turned 
over the leaves, many eyes have passed along the 
lines. With what measure of intelligence, and 
of approval or dissent, did those persons respec- 
tively follow the train of thoughts ? How many 
of them were honestly intent on becoming wise 
by what they read ! How many sincere prayers 
were addressed by them to the Eternal Wisdom 
during the perusal ? How many have been de- 
termined, in their judgment or their actions, by 
these books ? What emotions, temptations, or 
painful occurrences, may have interrupted the 
reading of this book or of that ? In how many 
instances may a reader have shut one of them, 
to indulge in a folly or a vice, of which that very 
book had warned him to beware ? Some of 
these volumes are histories of the life and death 
of good men : how many readers may have pro- 
ceeded along the narrative, approving and ad- 
miring ; and, envying the happy termination of 
the course, have said, " Let me die the death of 
the righteous," and nevertheless have pursued a 
contrary course, and come to a melancholy end? 
May not some one of these books be the last 
that some one person lived to read ? Many that 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 23 

have perused them are dead ; each made an exit 
in a manner and with circumstances of its own ; 
what were the manner and circumstances in 
each instance ? It was a most solemn event to 
that person ; but how ignorant concerning it am 
I, who now perhaps have my eye on the book 
which he read the last! What a power of asso- 
ciation, what an element of intense significance, 
would invest some of these volumes, if I could 
have a momentary vision of the last scene of a 
number of the most remarkable of their former 
readers ! Of that the books can tell me nothing; 
but let me endeavour to bring the fact, that per- 
sons have read them and died, to bear with a 
salutary influence on my own mind while I am 
reading any of them. Let me cherish that tem- 
per of spirit which is sensible of intimations of 
what is departed, remaining and mingling with 
what is present, and can thus perceive some 
monitory glimpses of even the unknown dead. 
What multiplied traces of them on some of these 
books are perceptible to the imagination, which 
beholds successive countenances long since 
"changed and sent away," bent in attention 
over the pages ! And the minds which looked 
from within through those countenances, con- 
versing with the thoughts of other minds per- 
haps long withdrawn, even at that time, from 
among men — what and where are thev now? 



24 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

Among the representations of the objects of faith 
contained in any of these works, what passages 
may they be which approach the nearest to a 
description of that condition of existence to 
which those readers were transferred, after clos- 
ing the book for the last time ? If I could have 
a sign, when I happen to fall on some page dark 
with portentous images of the evil which awaits 
the impious and wicked, that a certain former 
reader carelessly and presumptuously dared the 
experiment, and has found a reality correspond- 
ing to those menaces, but more tremendous, or 
a sign, when I am reading sentences animated 
with noble and delightful ideas of the felicity 
which awaits the faithful, that a certain preced- 
ing reader (and suppose him signified by name) 
is now in the experience of a fact, true in prin- 
ciple to these anticipations, but far transcending 
in degree— how powerfully should I be arrested 
at those passages, as if I were come to an open- 
ing from the invisible world, through which I 
could hear "sounds of lamentation and woe," or 
songs of triumph, from the identical beings who, 
at a certain hour in the past, looked on these 
lines ! There is actually a person telling me 
that he looked once on these very descriptions, 
these emblems, which are at this moment before 
my sight, and that he, the same person, is at this 
time that I am looking at them, overwhelmed 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 25 

or enraptured by the reality. But I, that am 
come after him, to read these representations 
now, do I solemnly consider that I am myself 
making my election of the yet unseen good or 
evil, and that very soon I shall leave the books 
in my turn, and arrive at the consequence ? 

Sometimes the conjectural reference to the 
former possessors and readers of books seems to 
be rendered a little less vague, by our finding at 
the beginning of an old volume one or more names 
written, in such characters, and perhaps accom- 
panied with such dates, that we are assured those 
persons must long since have done with all books. 
The name is generally all we can know of him 
who inserted it; but we can thus fix on an indi- 
vidual as actually having possessed this volume ; 
and perhaps there are here and there certain 
marks which should indicate an attentive peru- 
sal. What manner of person was he ? What 
did he think of the sentiments, the passages 
which I see that he particularly noticed ? If 
there be opinions here which I cannot admit, 
did he believe them ? If there be counsels here 
which I deem most just and important, did they 
effectually persuade him ? Was his conscience, 
at some of these passages, disturbed or calm ? 
In what manner did he converse on these sub- 
jects with his associates ? What were the most 
marked features of his character — what the most 



26 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

considerable circumstances of his life — in what 
spirit and expectations did he approach and 
reach its close ? The book is perhaps such a 
one as he could not read without being cogently 
admonished that he was going to his great ac- 
count. He went to that account — how did he 
meet and pass through it ? This is no vain re- 
very. He, the man who bore and wrote this 
name, did go, at a particular time, though unre- 
corded, to surrender himself to his Judge. But 
I, who handle the book that was his, and ob- 
serve his name, and am thus directing my 
thoughts into the dark after the man, I also am 
in progress toward the same tribunal, when it 
will be proved to my joy or sorrow, whether I 
have learned true wisdom from my books, and 
from my reflections on those who have possessed 
and read them before. 

But it may be that the observer's eye fixes on 
a volume which instantly recalls to his mind a 
person whom he well knew — a revered parent 
perhaps, or a valued friend, who is recollected 
to have approved and inculcated the principles 
of the book, or perhaps to have given it to the 
person who is now looking at it as a token of 
regard, or an inoffensive expedient for drawing 
attention to an important subject. He may 
have the image of that relative or friend, as in 
the employment of reading that volume, or in 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 27 

the act of presenting it to him. This may 
awaken a train of remembrances leading away 
from any relation to the hook, and possibly of 
salutary tendency ; but also, such an association 
with the book may have an effect, whenever he 
shall consult it, as if it were the departed friend, 
still more than the author, that uttered the sen- 
timents. The author spoke to any one indiffer- 
ently — to no one in particular; but the sentiments 
seem to be especially applied to me, when they 
come in this connection with the memory of one 
who was my friend. Thus he would have spo- 
ken to me ; thus in effect he does speak to me, 
while I think of him as having read the book, 
and regarded it as particularly adapted to me ; 
or seem to behold him, as when reading it in my 
hearing, and sometimes looking off from the page 
to make a gentle enforcement of the instruction, 
He would have been happy to anticipate, that, 
whenever I might look into it, my remembrance 
of him would infuse a more touching signifi- 
cance, a more applying principle, into its import- 
ant sentiments ; thus retaining him, though in- 
visibly, and without his actual presence, in the 
exercise of a beneficent influence. But indeed 
I can, at some moments, indulge my mind to 
imagine something more than this mere ideal 
intervention to reinforce the impression of truth 
upon me, insomuch that, supposing it were per- 



28 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

mitted to receive intimations from those who 
have left the world, it will seem to me possible 
that I might, when looking into some parts of 
that book, in a solitary hour of night, perceive 
myself to be once more the object of his atten- 
tion, signified by a mysterious whisper from no 
visible form ; or by a momentary preternatural 
luminousness pervading the lines, to intimate 
that a friendly intelligence that does not forget 
me, would still and again enforce on my consci- 
ence the dictates of piety and wisdom which I 
am reading. And shall it be as nothing to me, 
for effectual impression, that both my memory 
recalls the friend as when living, in aid of these 
instructions, and that my imagination, without 
any discord with my reason, apprehends him, 
when now under a mightier manifestation of 
truth, as still animated with a spirit which would, 
if that were consistent with the laws of the 
higher economy, convey to me yet again the 
same testimony and injunctions ? Is all influ- 
ential relation dissolved by the withdrawment 
from mortal intercourse ; so that let my friends 
die, and I am as loose from their hold upon me 
as if they had ceased to exist, or even never had 
existed ? 

In this slight exemplification of the manner 
in which the sight of an assemblage of books may 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 29 

awaken serious reflection, by recalling to our view 
the persons who are imagined or known to have 
possessed or read them, we are supposing the as- 
sociation confined to the particular volumes on 
the spot. Any attempt at widening the scope of 
reflection toward the whole extent of all the edi- 
tions and copies of each book, would confuse and 
dissipate the meditation in a multiplicity incon- 
ceivable and endless. Think of any one book 
that has been long and extensively circulated — 
suppose 'Doddrige's Rise and Progress of Reli- 
gion in the Soul.' The immense number of im- 
pressions have engaged the attention, less or more, 
of hundreds of thousands of persons. Each of 
those copies has had its own particular destina- 
tion, and many of them have, doubtless, been at- 
tended with remarkable circumstances, though to 
us unknown. If some of the most memorable 
could be brought to our knowledge, in connec- 
tion with the individual and still existing copies 
which they befell, what an interest would be at- 
tached to those books, bearing such memorials 
of the past ! Imagine by what a strange diver- 
sity of persons, as to disposition, mental endow- 
ment, conduct, age ; in what a variety of situa- 
tions, under how many peculiar conjunctures of 
occurrence ; and with what dissimilar impressions 
and results, the book has been perused or no- 
ticed! It is striking, to a degree even awful, to 



30 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 

reflect what such a book must have done; to how 
many it may have imparted thoughts new and 
affecting, and which nothing could expel; how 
many it may have been made the mean of leading 
into a happy life, and to a happy end; how many 
it has arrested, disturbed, and warned, whom it 
could not persuade; of how many it has aggra- 
vated the responsibility, more than influenced the 
conduct. So great a number and diversity of ac- 
countable beings, unknown, for the most part, to 
one another, scattered here and there, over more 
than one country, and over a space of time ap- 
proaching to a century, have come into some cer- 
tain relation to this one book! Among them, 
many a single instance might, if the case could 
be fully brought to our knowledge, exhibit a re- 
markable history of a train of thought and emo- 
tion, of determination and practical result; pos- 
sibly including singular incidents, opportune and 
auspicious, or of disastrous influence. And who 
shall presume to cast any thought toward an as- 
signable duration of the effect resulting to so many 
persons, from their attention having fallen on this 
work, when that effect is gone, or is to go, into 
the interests of eternity ? Let the idea of its un- 
kown prolongation be combined with that of the 
number of beings experiencing it, and it would be 
no extravagant fantasy to believe, that the pious 
author may find it one of the amazements of his 



SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 31 

future enlarging knowledge, to have a manifesta- 
tion in some way unfolding itself to him, of even 
a minor part of the consequences of what he 
wrote. 

It is but a diminutive portion of what must 
have happened to the book, in relation to its for- 
mer readers and transient inspectors, that we can 
bring within the view of our mind, with any dis- 
tinctness of apprehension. But it is easy to re- 
present to ourselves a few instances of so general 
a description, that it must be certain there have 
been many such. And we may perhaps be in- 
dulged in the hope of inducing somewhat of a 
serious and favourable predisposition, in some 
one or other, whose attention may hereafter be 
drawn to the work, by employing the remainder 
of this Essay in specifying a few exemplifications 
of the manner of reception and attention, which 
the book may be imagined to have found, with 
persons of several supposed characters of mind; 
and suggesting, in each case, some of the appro- 
priate considerations. We would wish to fall on 
such questions, persuasives, or expostulations, as 
might have been pertinently addressed, and pos- 
sibly in some instances were addressed to the per- 
sons so described, by a sensible religious friend; 
whose character we may be allowed to personate 
in representing how his office might be perform- 
ed. 



32 



CHAPTER II. 

CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED TO THE UNBELIEVER IN 
REVEALED RELIGION ON THE FOLLY OF REJECTING 
DIVINE REVELATION AND THE BLESSINGS WHICH 
CHRISTIANITY OFFERS TO THE WORLD. 

IT would be of little use to expatiate on the 
supposition (not an improbable one) that such 
a book may casually, at one time or another, have 
fallen under the transient notice of a decided un- 
believer in revealed religion ; an unbeliever, there- 
fore, in effect, in religion altogether. We can easi- 
ly conceive the supercilious air and the note of 
scorn at the sight of what cost the excellent au- 
thor so much earnest labour, with the most pure 
and benevolent intention, and has occupied so 
many thousand hours of the grave attention of 
readers; what has been the mean of awakening 
many thoughtless spirits to seriousness; what has, 
in not a few instances, opportunely occurred to 
decide a mind wavering in the most momentous 
of all practical questions ; and what has by many 
been gratefully recollected near the close of life 
as having greatly contributed to the cause of its 



CONSIDERATIONS, ETC. 33 

closing well. He could not be unapprised of such 
things belonging to its history, unless we sup- 
pose him more ignorant of the extension and ef- 
fect of what may be called our religious literat- 
ure, than is quite consistent with the character 
of a well informed man, which we may be sure 
he claimed, But we may believe that the know- 
ledge of this did notat all modify the tone of con- 
tempt in which he repeated the title of the book 
to give it a new turn: 'Kise and Progress of — ■ 
delusion, superstition, nonsense! Bise of an ig- 
nis fatuus, from fermenting ignorance, to glim- 
mer and ramble in a progress to extinction and 
nothing!' And he was elated in the self-com- 
placency of being so much more wise and fortun- 
ate than all such writers and all their believing 
readers. 

But was it a self-complacency quite entire and 
unmingled, on which could be maintained in 
steady uniform tenor, through the diversity of cir- 
cumstances, and the varying moods of the mind. 
Let us suppose that, soon after his indulging this 
contempt of the book and its subject, some griev- 
ous occurrence, or even the more unexplained 
fluctuation of feeling, reduced him for a while to 
a somewhat reflective or gloomy temper; and 
that, just then, one of his own fraternity turned 
in to see him, and happened to catch sight of the 
same book — if indeed it be an admissible supposi- 

c 



34 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

tion. that it could have been suffered to remain 
anywhere near him. We may imagine the visi- 
tant to regard the book with the same disposition 
as his friend ; and let it be supposed that he went 
into a strain of congratulation something like 
the following: — 'What a noble privilege of eleva- 
tion we enjoy over those silly dupes of imposture 
and superstition, the authors of these works, (such 
of them as realty think as they write,) and their 
disciples, who gravely and honestly believe what 
they read! To think what a mighty concern 
these simple people are always making of their 
souls, talking of their spiritual nature, their im- 
mortal principle, their infinite value ! Whereas 
we by virtue of reason disenchanted and illum- 
inated, could tell them that this soul, so fondly 
idolized, so ludicrously extolled, is nothing more 
than an accident of corporeal organization, and 
necessarily perishes with the material frame— 
with the body, as they call it in contradistinc- 
tion, and speak of it in terms of comparative con- 
tempt, as if they possessed something incompar- 
ably more noble. They are for ever, too, refer- 
ring to a Supreme Being, with whom they fancy 
they are standing in some mysterious and sub- 
lime relation. They talk of his favour, his provi- 
dence, his grace: and actually imagine they can 
hold a direct communication with him, indulg- 
ing a fantastic notion of some special good to be 



TO THE UNBELIEVER. 35 

obtained from him by importunate solicitation. 
"What an inflation of vanity — to fancy that such 
a being (if there be such a one) must be contin- 
ually thinking of them; that he should care about 
their dispositions and deportment toward him; 
and that they can attract his special attention, 
and constrain him to give peculiar tokens of his 
favour ! And what a wretched bondage of sup- 
erstition — to be, at every step, in every practical 
question, with respect to every inclination and 
emotion, and with the sacrifice of whatever their 
own immediate interest may plead, under the con- 
straint of an imaginary obligation to consult the 
will of some invisible and unknown authority ! 
Our privilege of sounder reason reduces and res- 
tores us to ourselves, from all such visionary am- 
plitude of relations; and exempts us from all the 
vain solicitudes and distractions of an unremit- 
ting endeavour to live in consistency with them. 
It is enough that we hold our transient being un- 
der certain laws of nature, fixed in the system of 
the world, to which it is more easy to submit, 
than to the will and continual interference of a 
formal and foreign authority. Our subjection 
to these laws we cannot help, but are happy to 
take our destiny under it, with the free allow- 
ance to follow our own inclinations as far as we 
can. If there be an Almighty power, we may 
well believe he has other aifairs to mind than 



36 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

that of interfering with us while we are minding 
our own. 

It is true, these deluded people are persuaded 
that he has made an express communication to 
men, declaring the relations in which they stand, 
and announcing his will. And indeed it must be 
confessed to be quite miraculous, that so many 
things concur to make a semblance of evidence 
that there has been such a communication. But 
let us not trouble ourselves about the matter ; it 
is absurd to imagine there can have been any 
such anomaly in the course of things, any such 
arbitrary substitution for the dictates of our rea- 
son: our licence of acting as we desire would be 
surrendered in believing it; and we will not be- 
lieve it. 

To crown the whole set of delusions which 
these people call their faith, they are actually 
persuaded that there remains for men a consci- 
ous existence after death ; a perpetual existence, 
they say, in a state bearing a retributive relation 
to what they shall have been in this life. And 
they are elated with the hope, and vehemently 
stimulated to exertions for the attainment of an 
eternal felicity. A magnificent dream, certainly, 
for those who can lay their sober senses aside, 
to admit the allusion. Nor can we deny, that, 
through the medium of such a notion, these en- 
thusiasts have a view of death vastly different 



TO THE UNBELIEVER. 37 

from ours, and feel an augmented interest in 
their existence as they approach near the end of 
what they are calling its introductory stage. To 
hear them talk, one would think they had re- 
ceived messengers or visions from another world, 
to inform them of a splendid allotment and re- 
ception already prepared for them there, and of 
friends impatient for their arrival. And it is a 
notorious fact, that, on the strength of such a 
presumption, great numbers of the devotees to 
this faith have resigned their life with exulta- 
tion, not a few of them under tortures inflicted 
for their fidelity to this their superstition. Well, 
the delusion and the existence broke up together. 
And for the present race of pious fools, let them 
expend their cares, their passions, their life, their 
very souls, upon their adored fallacy ; while we, 
on a higher ground, can be amused to see them 
led on by a phantom, which ere long will mock 
at their sudden fall, one after another, into no- 
thing. We envy them not the ambitious aspir- 
ings which cheat them out of the enjoyment of 
this world, never, assuredly, to repay them in 
another. If we lose anything worth calling 
pleasure, in being destitute of that hope which 
flatters them with images of a happy futurity, 
we have an ample compensation in the riddance 
of that fear which visits even some of them, in 



38 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

their gloomy moments, with alarms of a miser- 
able one. Besides, a happiness of such a nature 
as they dream of would be little congenial with 
the inclinations which actuate us, and which we 
have neither power nor desire to alter. Our 
wisdom is to make the most that we can, in the 
indulgence of these inclinations, of the world that 
we are in. We hope in good fortune, that our 
life may be long and prosperous ; and if any 
thing of a sombre hue should threaten to come 
over its latter stages, through infirmities and the 
evident approach of its termination, we shall 
have the resource of philosophy and fate ; and 
may find some remaining amusements that will 
please and divert us to the last. And when, at 
length, we are forced out of the world and exist- 
ence, we shall have no consciousness of our loss. 
How insensible, happily, for us, we, or rather 
the dust that once composed us, will be, while 
thousands of deluded creatures will be occupied 
with such books as the ' Rise and Progress of 
Eeligion in the Soul,' and with the gravest ear- 
nestness afflicting themselves with a superstitious 
discipline for the attainment of an imaginary 
heaven, with the frequent intrusion of the dread 
of an equally fictitious hell. 

Now, could the supposed speaker, without 
plainly belying the matter, have made out the 
case for congratulation in terms much more gra- 



TO THE UNBELIEVER. 39 

tifying than these? But we may reasonably 
doubt whether a strain like this, expressed in a 
confident tone of superior wisdom, but so pal- 
pably betraying, with inadvertent honesty, the 
sordid and disconsolate character and adjuncts 
of the vaunted privilege, would be listened to 
with complacency, during the depressed mood 
of the scorner of the religious book, religious 
persons, and religion itself. We can imagine 
him saying, Pray, suspend your song of triumph 
and disdain : it has to me a raven sound. Are 
we, then, in the very elation of our pride, in 
plain fact thus, prostrate on the earth ? Must 
we confess, that we hold our advantage of reason 
disabused, of stronger and freer intelligence, at 
the cost of admitting so humiliating an estimate 
of our being and destiny ? Really we are in 
danger of giving these people that we despise oc- 
casion to indulge contempt or pity in their turn. 
I could almost wish that I were under the same 
delusion. 

It would have contributed little to recover 
him from this recoil of feeling, if just about the 
same time an intelligent religious man had fal- 
len into his company, had happened to learn in 
what manner the serious book and its subject had 
been disposed of, and had thrown in a few of his 
suggestions, to re-inspirit the shrinking arro- 
gance of irreligion. — I am rather sorry (we may 



40 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

suppose him to say,) that a book like that, writ- 
ten with the most simple and benevolent desire 
to do good, by a man who had deeply studied 
his subject, should have been the object of a 
contempt which I should have thought full as 
justly bestowed on some of those productions, of 
frivolous quality or dishonest intention, which I 
believe are the objects of your favour. How- 
ever, a work which has engaged the most seri- 
ous attention, and powerfully operated on the 
character of multitudes, and will do so of multi- 
tudes more, can afford to incur your passing 
glance and expressions of disdain. And the 
subject of the book, religion, can afford it too — 
that religion which has sustained the severest 
examination, and secured the conviction, and 
animated the virtues in life, and hopes in death, 
of many of the strongest, noblest minds, who 
have bequeathed to its glory all that was illus- 
trious in humanity. So honoured, what can it 
lose, think you, of its dignity and venerableness, 
by the refusal of your homage ? It can, I re- 
peat, afford that you should be its rejecters and 
contemners, and should lend all the credit of 
wisdom and virtues such as yours, to the cause 
which is so fierce to explode it. With perfect 
impunity to its honours, religion can have you 
going about proclaiming that you have received 
a light by which it is exposed as a delusion and 



TO THE UNBELIEVER. 41 

imposture, — a light of the same kind, (if so grave 
a topic would allow so ludicrous an allusion,) as 
that which was obtained where the satirist re- 
ports to have seen the wise men at work to 
extract sunbeams from cucumbers. But when, 
in this self-assurance of rectified understanding, 
you are indulging your contempt of religion, 
does the thought never strike you, what a very 
curious chance it was that this brighter illumi- 
nation, under which the old imposture vanishes, 
should fall exactly on you f For, was your 
mind of an order, or in a disposition^ the most 
likely to attract the latent element of truth, to 
combine with it, and disperse the fog ? Was 
yours the spirit to contemplate with comprehen- 
sive survey, in pure serenity of temper, the the- 
ory of religion ? If, from moral causes, you 
needed and ivished that religion should not be 
true, was that the security for impartial enquiry, 
and undeceptive conclusions ? If you experi- 
enced what you thought injustice (or I will sup- 
pose it really such) from persons of religious 
profession, and your resentment against them 
grew into reaction against religion itself, was 
that the proper mood for examining its autho- 
rity ? If you had yourself made pretensions to 
piety, but, forfeiting your Christian character by 
misconduct, were censured or disowned by a re- 
ligious community with which you had been 



42 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

connected, and then called on infidelity to assist 
your revenge, was that a benign conjunction 
under which to commence your new intellectual 
enterprise ? And if, to decide your hesitation, 
expel your yet lingering fears, and promote your 
progress, you betook yourself to the companion- 
ship, through the attraction of their irreligion, 
of men whom you knew to be unprincipled and 
profligate, and perhaps ignorant too, was that 
the school in which you can feel pride to have 
been learners ? Such things recollected, how- 
ever, may be quite compatible with self-compla- 
cency, in persons of your principles ; but you 
may believe that religion will suffer no default 
of its honours, by not having such as you for 
adherents. 

I allow that you have your advantages in its 
rejection. Indeed, why should I deny this very 
thing to be one — that you can think of such a 
mode of deliverance from it, and not be stifled 
with shame ? You have the still greater privi- 
lege of being set loose from the constraint of 
many obligations and prohibitions. You are a 
"chartered (seZ/'-chartered) libertine," and can 
give yourself freely away to pleasures, amuse- 
ments, or ambition. And you boast that you 
have the high advantage of being intent on rea- 
lities, while the captives of religion, you say, 
dragged or threatened off from a thousand at- 



TO THE UNBELIEVER. 43 

tractive objects and opportunities, are consum- 
ing their spirits and life on mere ideas, on the 
imaginations of some intangible, unseen, and re- 
versionary good. But suspend, for a moment, 
your boast about this reality of the materials of 
your happiness. Say whether it be not a fact, 
that you are in no other possession of your fav- 
ourite objects than merely in idea, during the 
far greater proportion of your time. Your think- 
ing of them, wishing for them, imagining how 
delightful would be the possession of them; con- 
triving how to attain them, feeling how wretch- 
ed and impatient you are in not having them 
yet, fretting at the obstacles, raging at your dis- 
appointments ; again eagerly anticipating them, 
as now nearly within your reach ; being morti- 
fied at a new delay, thrown in this chilling mo- 
ment on the reflection what the pursuit has 
already cost you, and what it may cost you still; 
alarmed, perhaps, at what the very success may 
cost you, in its possible or certain consequences 
— what kind of reality is all this ? Nearly the 
same as that of a fair garden of fruit to a man 
looking at it, or attempting it across a treacher- 
ous moat, a steep slippery bank, and an almost 
impenetrable fence of thorns. Is this the reality 
which will bear you out in your exultation over 
those who are wasting, you say, their energy on 
objects which exist to them only in idea ? 



44 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

But you do sometimes obtain your objects, 
and can say you now possess the thing itself; 
which the devotees to religion, you say, never 
can, since that which they are peculiarly to as- 
pire after, is confessedly something not belong- 
ing to this world. And you account it the special 
advantage which you have over them, that it is 
through the rejection of the truth and authority 
of religion that you are empowered to make a 
larger appropriation of what the real world con- 
tains and offers. Had I remained servile to that 
domination, you will exclaim, what an interdict 
should I have met, whichever way I turned ! 
This object I must not have put forth my hand 
toward at all ; this other, I must beware of fol- 
lowing beyond a certain length. If, thus en- 
closed round with a restriction from so many 
desirable things, I could soar aloft, that were 
well. I had leave to mount up through the sky, 
to walk ideally in a paradise, holding converse 
with angels, and fixing, by anticipation, on a 
mansion in New Jerusalem. But I was for no 
such ethereal altitudes and impalpable superfine 
felicities. I wanted the substantial good of this 
earth ; wanted some things of a kind, others in 
a measure, and many on terms which religion 
forbade. I have disowned the usurped autho- 
rity, have burst through the restricting circle ; 
and now, see me here in possession or command 



TO THE UNBELIEVER. 45 

of things which need no faith to give them sub- 
stance, and which are not the less agreeable for 
being a little seasoned with what your spiritual 
people call sin. 

But these realities, when actually possessed, 
do they never let in upon you a mortifying con- 
viction, that you have been nevertheless the dupe 
of illusion ? As a purveyor to your senses, or 
as a gay spirit, or as a pertinacious aspirer to 
some pitch of pre-eminence above your fellow- 
mortals, in wealth or display or power, you may, 
in some instance or measure, have succeeded in 
converting the mere images into the very sub- 
stance ; exulting, I may suppose, to think how 
much you owed in this achievement to your 
emancipation from all religious belief: but re- 
collect, how long did the possession preclude all 
painful sense of deficiency ? Did no invading 
dissatisfaction turn your mind to bitterness of 
reflection on the previous enchantment of ima- 
gination, which had so long prompted you on 
with assurance of complete delight ? Might you 
never have been overheard to murmur, 'What 
inanity in all these things !' and to curse your 
destiny, as secretly but an accomplice of religion, 
to punish and plague you for its rejection ? 

Thus, then, if you bring to account the entire 
quantity of the busy occupation of your faculties 
about that which you pursue as your supreme 






46 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

good, and observe that the proportion of perhaps 
nineteen parts in twenty of all this is not the in- 
terest of actual possession, and then make the 
deduction for the feelings of disappointment and 
chagrin incident to the possession obtained, (and 
which throw you back again into reflection and 
imagination ; that is, into mere ideas, and those 
of a most irksome kind,) it will appear that you 
have an extremely narrow ground for your boast 
of being a man for the realities of good, in con- 
trast with the believer in religion, who, you say, 
subsists on mere images, gleams, and shadows. 
"Would your experience thus far warrant you to 
compute, that all the moments of full satisfac- 
tion added together, would amount to as much 
as one year in a long life ? A splendid triumph, 
for a man who is blessing his superior reason 
and good fortune, that he is not cheated out of 
what is real and substantial, to waste his being 
on the phantasms of Christian faith ! So much 
it is that you can gain by availing yourself, to 
the utmost extent that you dare, under the limi- 
tations imposed by the constitution of nature 
and society, of the licence conferred by your in- 
fidelity. And so high is your advantage over 
those who, while indulging the hope of an im- 
mortal happiness, can make more than you can 
of this world itself, under the sanction of Chris- 
t an principles in their selection and pursuit. 



TO THE UNBELIEVER. 47 

But, while forced to admit so humiliating a 
representation, you will perhaps, in the reaction 
of pride, say, that your being in possession of 
truili is itself alone a noble eminence that you 
have attained above the subjects of an impos- 
ture, the deluded believers in a revelation. Your 
spirit has risen up in its strength, and defied the 
antiquated superstition to lay you under its spell ; 
it has gone forth in its might, and exterminated 
from your field of view the crowd of spectres and 
chimeras. But you must allow me to doubt, 
whether you really feel in this matter all the 
confident assurance which you pretend. I sus- 
pect there are times when you dare not look out 
over that field, for fear of seeing the portentous 
shapes there again ; and even that they some- 
times come close to present a ghastly visage to 
you through the very windows of your strong- 
hold. I have observed in men of your class, 
that they often appear to regard the arrayed evi- 
dences of revealed religion, not with the simple 
aversion which may be felt for error and decep- 
tion, but with that kind of repugnance which 
betrays a recognition of adverse power. Say 
what penance you could not rather undergo, or 
of which your most favourite pleasures, (even of 
those in which you verify your privilege of ex- 
emption from the authority of religion,) you 
would not rather deny yourself, for a consider- 



48 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

able time, than be obliged to study deliberately, 
in sober retirement, a few of the works most dis- 
tinguished for strength of argument in defence 
of Christianity : though this, it might be pre- 
sumed, should be a fair expedient for confirming 
your satisfaction ? I know that some of your 
class, (and perhaps your conscience testifies as 
to one,) have no resource for escaping from their 
disquietude but in diverting their attention com- 
pletely from the subject, by throwing themselves 
into the whirl of amusement, into business, con- 
viviality, or intemperance. But it is not the 
hero's part to affect to be occupied with neces- 
sary employments, or to hide himself in a throng 
of masks and revellers, when he descries the an- 
tagonist approaching to challenge him. 

But it may happen, that the subject, in its 
menacing aspect, will present itself to you under 
circumstances which preclude this escape. And 
you cannot be unapprised what a striking dif- 
ference, in spirit and deportment, we have some- 
times had an occasion of observing, between one 
of your tribe, and a man whose moral strength 
was in the belief and power of revealed religion, 
when overtaken by some calamity, or # attacked 
by a dangerous distemper. Nor can you have 
failed to hear of examples, in which that differ- 
ence has become quite prodigious, when the par- 
ties have sensibly approached their last hour. 



TO THE UNBELIEVER. 49 

You cannot have forgotten instances among those 
now lost to your fraternity, of some whose clo- 
sing life presented a direful scene; who could 
maintain no longer either their disbelief or their 
courage ; who poured forth execrations on their 
principles, and on those from whom they had 
learned them ; called out on pious relatives, ab- 
sent, or even dead ; implored the intercession of 
Christian friends ; as if, ridiculed so often before 
for their faith, they were now believed to have 
power to propitiate insulted Heaven; adjured 
and dismayed their associates in irreligion, if any 
of them had friendship or hardihood enough to 
stay by them, in impotence to console them: were 
agonized with horror indescribable, and expired, 
as it were, in an explosion of the last feeble life, 
by the energy of despair. What security can 
you have, that yours shall not be such an exit? 
For some that have ended so were exceeded by 
none in the previous ostentation of confidence in 
both their principles and their bravery. It 
would betray a contemptibly reckless temper of 
mind, if you can answer, in a tone of indifference, 
that if such is to be the event, it will only be the 
addition of one hideous circumstance more, to 
the sufferings naturally incident to death ; the 
concurrence of a disorder of the mind, with that 
which may be destroying the body; the ultimate 
working out, perhaps of a little superstition, 

D 



50 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

which may have lain latent from the infection 
of early false instruction. Allow the case to be 
put so, looking no farther ; and even then, if you 
were a thoughtful man, and apt, as comports with 
that character, to look forward, the anticipation 
of so frightful a scene as possible, would be 
enough to quench many a lively sparkle, to em- 
bitter many an unhallowed gratification, to re- 
press many an irreligious daring, to dispirit many 
an ambitious project, to mortify many a proud 
sentiment. But there is another thing, not to 
be overlooked, which may warn you to take care 
how you dispose of the matter so lightly. In 
most of these fearful death-scenes of infidelity, 
the unhappy mortal has been racked to a con- 
fession, that he had never dealt honestly with the 
subject, and with his soul; that he had never 
fairly examined the question ; that he had not 
been sincerely intent on knowing the truth; that 
he had repelled intrusive lights, and suppressed 
remonstrant emotions ; that he had suffered his 
pride, his vanity, or his sensuality, to determine 
his rejection of the authority of revelation. So 
that conviction rushed upon them, not in the 
simple character of truth, but also in that of ven- 
geance. It had retreated before their defiance 
of both its more imperative and more gentle at- 
tempts during their progress, only to await them, 
in retributive power, at the end. See that you 



TO THE UNBELIEVER 51 

do not forget that circumstance of their experi- 
ence, when you are disposed to make so light of 
the acknowledged possibility that your end may 
be like theirs. 

But I am unwilling, while looking on your 
countenance, to foresee you as exhibiting, one 
day, another such spectacle ; and will limit my 
imagination to represent you as in a situation 
less appalling, but very mournful. Let it be sup- 
posed that you live on, constant to your present 
system, and considerably successful in your en- 
deavour to make the best of the world on your 
own plan, till you attain an advanced age, a 
period when accumulating signs, and even the 
mere reckoning of time, must warn you, that you, 
have nearly had your day. Let it be supposed that 
you then happen to be in company with a man of 
equal age, who has been governed from his youth 
by a firm and cordial faith in that which you 
have rejected. Imagine that you hear him, in- 
duced perhaps by the hope of conveying an in- 
fluence to the minds of some youthful friends, 
adverting briefly and unostentatiously to his past 
life, as a religious course ; recalling what he re- 
gards as the most sensible commencement of the 
decisive operation of religion on his mind, when 
the conviction of its truth and necessity became 
his reigning principle ; then, noting some of the 
effects which have evinced, in their succession, 



52 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

the progress of its efficacy, both in the power of 
its dominion, and in the creation of happiness ; 
and finally, expressing with emphasis his delight 
and gratitude, that now, in the cold evening shade 
of life, this heavenly light shines still brighter, as 
intermingling with those rays which are comiDg 
fast from a nobler state of existence, confidently 
expected to be attained through death. Imagine 
yourself silently hearing all this, expressed in 
perfect collectedness of mind, in language clear 
of all wildness and inflation, and observing the 
aspect of the speaker, uniformly dignified whether 
grave or animated ; and imagine, too, your own 
feelings at being placed in such a comparison. 
Can you conceive it possible for you to maintain 
the sense of a privileged condition, or not to sink 
in the profoundest mortification ? What ! will 
you not be compelled to think of a system which 
throws an aggravation of gloom on a period 
which the order of nature deprives of pleasures, 
and besets with multiplying grievances, thus 
brought in contrast with that other system, which 
warms and invigorates and enriches the close of 
a worn-out being, with something far better than 
all the vivacity and prospects of youth ? What 
will you think of a system which forbids thought- 
fulness to old age, and throws it for relief under 
the pressure of its infirmities, upon the resources 
of business, which it has no longer strength to 



TO THE UNBELIEVER. 53 

transact, or of amusements incongruous with the 
character of that season, and in which the anti- 
quated performer appears like a man dancing 
and jesting to the place of execution? You 
shrink at the idea of being placed in such a con- 
trast. I do not say to you, Embrace then, with- 
out delay, the faith which would place you, in 
that last stage, on the superior ground; — for you 
will tell me that your belief is not in your own 
power : meaning, when you say so, (is not this 
the plain truth ?) that you have no disposition 
to a serious, diligent, and really impartial re-ex- 
amination of the subject: but, at least, I am 
authorised to advise you to be henceforth a little 
reserved in your ridicule of books describing the 
rise and progress of religion in the soul. If 
tempted at any time to its unrestrained indul- 
gence, just look forward to the predicament in 
which you may one day feel that you stand, in 
comparison with a man who has experienced 
that process, (whether the operating cause be a 
beguilement or a truth,) and is joyfully awaiting 
its consummation. And I venture to predict to 
you, that, in such a case, your utmost efforts to 
reassure yourself that the man so contrasted with 
you is but a deluded fool, will do little to disperse 
the gloom settling and thickening on your spirit. 



54 



CHAPTER III. 



CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED TO YOUNG PERSONS 
ON THE DUTY AND ADVANTAGES OF EARLY PIETY, 
AND ON THE FATAL DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION 
AND OF NEGLECTING THE MOMENTOUS CONCERNS OF 
RELIGION IN YOUTH. 

BUT now let us turn our thoughts to conjec- 
ture the kind of reception which this good 
hook may have found with persons of several class- 
es greatly different from the example we have been 
supposing. — We may assume as a certainty, that 
it has caught the notice of very many persons 
indisposed to religion, but entertaining no doubt 
that we have a revelation to declare its nature, 
and to command our solemn attention to it. The 
circumstance did actually happen, that the words 
of the title were taken in by the eyes, and that 
some thoughts were involuntarily raised in the 
mind. Persons now living may recollect this 
having occurred to them, as an incident which 
did not please them. We can imagine it to have 
happened to more than a few gay young persons, 
of minds not uncultivated, not left entirely unin- 



CONSIDERATIONS, ETC. 55 

structed respecting the highest concern of their 
existence, but quite averse to think of so serious 
a subject. A pious relative might have placed 
the book, by a delicate device, in the way to seize 
the eye ; or it might be taken up when casually 
lying on the table of an acquaintance. And we 
are too sure we are but picturing an example of 
many that there have been of the same kind, 
when we imagine we see the young person hast- 
ily laying down the volume, with a look of dis- 
appointment and distaste, expressive of the sen- 
timent, That is no book for me. To glance 
over the title-page was quite disgust enough for 
so frivolous a spirit to endure. In another in- 
stance, we seem to see the young person inspec- 
ting the book for a few moments, in an unfixed, 
heedless manner, plainly indicating it would soon 
be closed ; presently throwing it aside, as worth 
no further attention : then fortunately detecting, 
where it had slidden in among better books, some 
very silly romance; seizing it as a discovered 
treasure, and unable to lay it down till a whole 
volume was run through. Another case may 
be conceived, in which our book, of the Rise and 
Progress of Religion, has chanced to be within 
sight, in the interval of animated, restless expec- 
tation of meeting some gay associates, or of go- 
insf to some amusement ; when it detained the 



56 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

youthful thought no longer than to suggest a 
pleasurable idea of the difference, between the 
dull and funereal business of religion, and such 
exhilaration as that in prospect. It might be 
no excess of fancy to suppose another case : that 
this same book obtruded itself on the sight of a 
young person in an hour of disgust and fallen 
spirits, after suffering some disappointment and 
mortification amidst those gay delights which 
had been so exultingly anticipated ; and that it 
excited no better feeling than this, Let me not 
have another odious thing just now to plague 
me ; I am vexed and out of patience enough. 
For one more instance : a young person of this 
light spirit might be on terms of acquaintance 
with one of a more thoughtful character, and 
might happen to find the latter reading, or ap- 
parently having just read, the book in question; 
and might betray some marks of sincere wonder 
at so strange a taste ; internally saying, If i" were 
ever to have been caught employed with such a 
book, I would have hastily put it out of sight, at 
the entrance of a pleasant visitor. — No one will 
doubt, that there may have been facts answering 
to these conjectural descriptions ; and we might, 
with equal probability, diversify the representa- 
tion into many other particular forms. Where 
and what are the persons now, who were the re- 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 57 

ality of what we are thus supposing ? But will 
there not be yet many more human beings to be 
added to the account of such examples ? 

It may be, that, in some of these instances, 
the young person did not escape receiving some 
hints of admonition from a friend, whose bene- 
volent vigilance had perceived this refusal to con- 
verse an hour, or a moment, with a book solici- 
ting attention to the most important subject. 
Whatever might actually be the strain of such 
an admonition, we may think that friend — not 
laying any stress on the bare circumstance of dis- 
like to this particular book, but taking occasion 
from it, as indicating aversion to religion itself — 
would have deserved to be listened to in using 
such terms as the following : — Will you be persua- 
ded, is it possible to induce you, to make a short 
effort with your mind, to constrain it to serious 
reflection ? Would you have me, or not, to regard 
you as capable of thinking and judging, as in 
possession of a share of good sense, and as ad- 
mitting that there really may be a just call for 
its exercise, even at your age? You are not 
willing to be accounted the reverse of this ? Well 
then, prove that you can think, and that you 
can perceive when there is a subject before 
you which has peculiar claims that you should 
think. And is there any thing which can 



58 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

urge a more peremptory claim than the ques- 
tions, What manner of being it is that you 
possess, to what end you possess it, and how it 
should be occupied, in order to the attain- 
ment of that end ? Ts your own nature a thing 
of such little account with you, that you are 
quite satisfied with the mere fact of its being 
an existence ; and that you have no doubt whe- 
ther you may give away all its faculties, without 
care or accountableness, to whatever pleases 
them, and invites them into action? Does 
every consciousness you feel of what there is in 
that nature, agree to your living as a gay bird 
of the spring, as a creature made for the play 
and revel of mere life and sensation ; or, at most, 
fitted for some little schemes of transient inter- 
est, confined to a span of existence, and liable to 
be broken up and given to the winds at any 
hour ? Is this all you find in the endowments 
of your nature ? Is this the amount of its cap- 
abilities and dignity ? No, you would say ; you 
believe that you possess, for you have been 
taught that all of us do, a spirit of noble quality 
and important destination. Do you indeed be- 
lieve any such thing ? What ! while I see the 
whole vigour of your being, animal and mental, 
at some times dissipated in levity, spirted off in 
effusions of mirth ; or, at other times, consumed 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 59 

in earnest protracted assiduity to accomplish 
some contrivance for personal display, some 
little feat of competition, or some scheme (a 
grand one you think) of creating for yourself a 
happiness for a few years, from materials which 
every day must diminish, and any day may an- 
nihilate? Is it impossible to you, or do you not 
think it worth while, to reflect whether so living 
be consistent with so believing ? Does it never 
strike you as a thing to wonder at, that there 
can be a creature so strangely formed as to ad- 
mit these things to coalesce, and that you hap- 
pen to be that creature ? Or do you escape all 
sense of inconsistency and shame, through mere 
thoughtlessness, which prevents your being re- 
minded of that truth which you say you believe? 
Mere thoughtlessness ! and how is that pos- 
sible ? How is it possible to believe what you 
affirm that you do, and not often feel a solemn 
influence coming over your mind, and banishing, 
for at least a little while, all trifling moods and 
interests ? Assured that you are, as to the most 
essential property of your nature, a spiritual and 
immortal being, think, account to yourself how 
it can be, that such a conviction, fixed and abid- 
ing within you, should abide there alone, dis- 
connected from all the activity of your ideas and 
feelings, having, so to speak, nothing to do there ; 
while, in all reason, it ought to be combined there 



00 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

with many most important ideas with which it 
has an inseparable relation, and which it ought 
to keep there in active force. 

For, consider what you are admitting, when 
you say you believe you are such a being. You 
are admitting that you stand in a solemn relation 
to the Almighty; that your present state of ex- 
istence is but a brief introduction to another; that 
your body is but a frame accommodated to retain 
your superior and more essential being for a short 
period in this world; that its interests, therefore, 
and all interests which respect this world exclu- 
sively, are infinitely insignificant in comparison 
with those of the spirit ; that you are every mo- 
ment in progress toward the experience of a hap- 
piness or misery of incalculable magnitude ; and 
that this short and uncertain life is the season for 
maturing the dispositions and habits to a state 
which will consign you to the one or the other, 
if the declarations of God be true. Can you at- 
tempt to deny, or pretend to doubt, that all this 
is included in the fact of your possessing a ration- 
al spirit, destined to endless existence, and most 
justly required to obey the commands of your 
Creator ? But if this be true, you cannot exer- 
cise your judgment, and listen to your conscience 
for one hour, without plainly seeing what is your 
highest interest, and most imperious duty. No- 
thing in the world, nothing in all truth, can press 






TO YOUNG PERSONS. 61 

upon you with mightier evidence, than that your 
grand business in life is, the care of the soul that 
shall live for ever. Confess to your reason and 
conscience that the case is so, and that any as- 
sertion to the contrary would instantly strike you 
as false and foolish. 

You do confess it. But what, then, should be 
thought of you, what should you think of your- 
self, if you will then act as if the very contrary 
were the truth I Suppose that (in such a spon- 
taneous escape of thoughts in words, as sometimes 
happens to a person musing in the security of 
solitude) the prevailing disposition of your mind 
were to utter itself involuntarily and audibly, and 
in expressions like these: — "My supreme concern 
is as clear to my view as the sun; there is no 
denying it, there is no question about it ; it is, to 
apply myself earnestly to secure the welfare, here 
and hereafter, of my immortal spirit: but I feel 
no such care; I dislike and evade all admonitions 
which would enforce it on me ; I yield myself to 
this disposition without restraint, or remorse, or 
fear, for the present, and shall do so — I do not 
know, nor much care, how long." Supposing this 
uttered in an almost unconscious passing of your 
mind into your voice, would you not be awaked 
and startled into recollection at sounds of such 
import, and be almost surprised into the question 
— " Who was saying that? Was it I? How 



62 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

strangely it would have sounded, if any one had 
been within hearing !" If any one had been with- 
in hearing ! And could you forget that there is 
One who perfectly knows that internal disposi- 
tion, of which expressions like these might be the 
genuine utterance? 

While you are intent on being happy, surely 
it should be one thing regarded as indispensable 
to your being truly so, that you can approve your- 
self: that, whatever imperfections there are for 
you to condemn and regret, you yet can feel a de- 
liberate complacency, a complacency of reflection 
and conscience, in the prevailing habit and pur- 
pose of your mind. What is it worth, that a var- 
iety of outward things should please you, if you 
are haunted with a sense that your own internal 
condition, the condition of your very self, is some- 
thing to grieve you? Now, I wish it were pos- 
sible to induce you to turn upon yourself one re- 
solute, patient, impartial inspection. Look with 
the intentness with which you would gaze on an 
emblematical picture, in whose signs you could 
believe your destiny to be figured out, — look on 
the being, formed for an endless futurity, but en- 
grossed by the interests of a day; appointed after 
a short term to pass into another world, but re- 
pelling all thoughts and monitions of it; capable 
of an elevated and perpetual felicity, but sunk and 
expended in transient pleasures and precarious 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 63 

hopes; invited to communion with the Father of 
Spirits, but turning away with indifference or 
aversion, to seek all that it wants, for affection 
and assistance, in the intercourse of associates 
who are equally careless of his favour; and sum- 
moned to adopt a wise and constant discipline, 
to make sure of its true welfare in time and eter- 
nity, but surrendering the formation of its char- 
acter, and the direction of its course, to whatever 
may happen to obtain the ascendancy, to casual 
impressions, ill-chosen friends, or the prevailing 
spirit and habits of the world. Behold this spec- 
tacle as being yourself, your very self. Do you 
turn from the sight and say, you do not like to 
look at it? What then ! you confess that, amidst 
all the youthful vivacity in which you spring to 
catch the passing pleasures, and call them happi- 
ness, one primary requisite to true happiness is 
wanting! You cannot be happy while you dare 
not be sometimes still, and abstracted from the 
stir, lest you should hear a complaining and ac- 
cusing voice from within, telling you there is 
something fatally wrong there. 

You are reluctant to give any attention to re- 
ligion, and to look into a book which describes 
its rise and progress in the soul. Why should 
you, you think, have the brightness of your early 
season overcast with the gloom of such a sub- 
ject? — preferring, in effect, that this shade, if it 



64 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

must come some time, should wait to bring addi- 
tional darkness over a period when the sunshine 
of youth will be past, and life be declining into 
that season which you never think of but as of 
itself a dreary one. How cruel the gay youth 
can resolve to be to the aged person that he ex- 
pects to become ! I will repel, he practically says, 
all invasion of a grave subject from this my sea- 
son of animation and delight, at the cost of hav- 
ing it to come, as a melancholy cloud, over a time 
when I shall, by the course of nature, have out- 
lived the best part of my life. So that my sea- 
son of energy and enjoyment be kept clear, never 
mind what I may be accumulating to bring sad- 
ness on my spirit in thai stage where I shall need 
every consolation. Surely the consciousness of 
acting on such a plan should itself be enough to 
damp the gayest of your vivacities. 

You are unwilling to yield to the claims of re- 
ligion. But will you not take the trouble to con- 
sider what religion is, and in what manner it con- 
cerns you? It is not a thing which your Crea- 
tor imposes on you by a mere arbitrary appoint- 
ment ; as if he would exact, simply in assertion of 
his supremacy, and in requirement of homage 
from his creature, something which is in itself 
foreign to the necessities of your nature. By its 
intrinsic quality it so corresponds to your nature, 
that the possession of it is vital, and its rejection 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 65 

mortal, to your felicity, even independently of its 
being made obligatory by the positive injunction 
of the Almighty. From the spiritual principle 
of your soul, there is an absolute necessity that 
it be raised into complacent communication with 
its Divine Original ; it is constituted to need this 
communication, now and for ever ; and if it be 
not so exalted, it is degraded and prostrated to 
objects which cannot, by their very nature, ade- 
quately meet, and fill, and bless its faculties : to 
be elevated to this communication is religion. 
You do not, I presume, wish that your spirit 
were a being destined to final extinction a few 
years hence ; but would you have it be immor- 
tal, and yet estranged from what must naturally 
concern it as immortal ? If really immortal, it 
is under a plain necessity of its nature to give a 
devoted regard to its interests of hereafter, of 
eternity: to do so is religion. Again, your soul 
is tainted with corruption ; it is infected with 
sin ; you are sometimes conscious that it is ; and 
this is a malady which may cling to it, and in- 
here in it, after all bodily diseases have ceased 
in death. But then there is the plainest neces- 
sity that some grand operation be effected in it 
to remove this fatal disorder ; that its condition 
be renovated and purified ; that the action of its 
powers be determined to the right ends ; that its 
guilt be pardoned ; that, in one word, it be re- 

E 



66 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

deemed : now, this great process in the soul is 
religion. Thus you may see that there can be 
no grosser misapprehension than that which has 
sometimes prompted the impious wish, that God 
had not made religion necessary by enjoining it; 
for that, but for this extrinsic necessity, this ne- 
cessity of mere obligation to his authority, reli- 
gion might have been neglected, and the neglec- 
ter have fared never the worse. But you plead, 
that whatever may be your conviction, and ought 
to be your feeling, you cannot help regarding 
religion as an austere and a gloomy concern; that 
you have at times wished the case were other- 
wise : but so it is, that the subject still presents 
the same repulsive aspect whenever it comes by 
unpleasant surprise, or in the returns of public 
or private religious instruction, on your atten- 
tion. You will take every precaution to avoid 
being left alone with a person, however estim- 
able and kind, from whom you are apprehensive 
of receiving any admonition respecting it. Per- 
haps even the sight of a book, familiarly known 
to be (as this of the Eise and Progress of Reli- 
gion) an earnest pointed inculcation of it, is like 
glancing at the picture of a skeleton. The sub- 
ject might become quite a grievance of your life, 
— even this subject which represents to you how 
to be happy for ever ! — did not your health, 
your elastic spirits, your companions, your di- 




TO YOUNG PERSONS. 67 

versions, defend you so well against its frequent 
or prolonged annoyance. But sometimes, per- 
haps, an interval does occur, when it visits you 
in such a character of authority, that your re- 
sistance fails for a short time, you are taken at 
an advantage, and compelled to hear something 
of its declarations, claims, and remonstrances. 
And then you murmur, and say, A cruel alter- 
native — to yield such submission, or incur such 
consequences ! Is it not hard that I should be 
required to surrender all the delights which are 
the privilege of my age, to repress my vivacity, 
to forsake my gay society, abandon my amuse- 
ments, to inflict self-denial on my inclinations 
at every turn, to deplore all that I am, and all 
that I have been ; to force my attention and 
affections away from this interesting world a- 
round me, toward another and unseen world of 
which I know nothing ; to toil through severe 
and never-ceasing exercises, called discipline; 
to exhaust my spirits in solemn reflection ; to 
live in terror lest every thing I do or enjoy 
should be sin ; to renounce, and put myself in 
conflict with, the prevailing habits of society; to 
be marked as an over-righteous or melancholy 
mortal ; to look through a darkened medium at 
every thing in life : and to go through the world 
thinking of every step as a progress toward the 
grave? 



68 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

Now, even were it admitted that all this is a 
true representation of religion, that all this is its 
requirement, the friend who is urging it upon 
you might still maintain his argument. The 
question, he would say, what cost we should he 
willing to hear in a process, is to be determined, 
if wisdom be the judge, by an estimate of the 
result. The greatest temporary evil would be a 
mild condition of the attainment of an eternal 
good. If religion actually did require all this, 
but in return assured you of being safe and 
happy for ever, what would your high endow- 
ment of reason be worth, in practical applica- 
tion, if you would not resolve on the endurance 
of such an introduction, rather than lose such a 
sequel ? 

But you well know that such a representa- 
tion, unqualified, is no just account of the de- 
mands of religion. And beware of allowing 
yourself in the disingenuousness of exaggerating 
the hardship, in order to extenuate to your con- 
science, or to vindicate against your friendly 
admonisher, your neglect of the duty. 

At the same time it is true, and must be un- 
equivocally avowed, that religion, effectually pro- 
secuted, does involve great labours, a discipline 
often severe, and therefore many painful experi- 
ences. It must include much that is mortifying 
to natural inclinations. How should it be other- 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 69 

wise with a being of a corrupt nature, who is to 
be trained and prepared, and that while under 
the incessant influences of a corrupt world, for a 
final state of holiness and felicity ? If the natu- 
ral condition of the mind be uncongenial with 
what is divine and heavenly, its affections unat- 
tempered to live and delight in that element 
which is the vitality of the happiness of the be- 
ings whom, alone and exclusively, the revelation 
from God, and even your own reason, authorise 
you to conceive of as happy in a superior state, 
— if there be this alienation and unfitness, (and 
what is the aversion to religion but the proof of 
it ? or rather, it is the thing itself,) — if the case 
be so, then the soul is in a condition so dread- 
fully wrong, that it is not strange the agency for 
transforming it should inflict pain in the salu- 
tary process. That it should work with some 
expedients of bitterness, keenness, and fire, is 
quite in analogy with the operations necessary 
for subduing the extreme maladies of an inferior 
order. Perhaps you will say that, as the Divine 
Power, in the time and in the person of our Lord, 
annihilated the worst diseases of the body by a 
single act, making the subject perfectly well in 
an instant, and without pain, so the Almighty 
could instantaneously set the moral nature right, 
causing the spirit to rise up suddenly in the 
delightful consciousness that not a particle of 



70 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

evil remains, blessed with a triumph over the 
disastrous fall, and assuming a ground still 
higher than that which our first progenitor lost. 
No doubt he could : but since he has not willed 
such an economy, the question comes to you, 
whether you can deliberately judge it better to 
carry forward a corrupt nature, uncorrected, un- 
transformed, unreclaimed to God, into the future 
state, where it must be miserable, than to under- 
go whatever severity is indispensable in the pro- 
cess of the religion which would prepare you for 
a happy eternity ? Keflect, that you are every 
day practically answering the question. Can 
it be that you are answering it in the affir- 
mative? Do I really see before me the ra- 
tional being who in effect avows, — I cannot, will 
not submit to such a discipline, though, in re- 
fusing it and resisting it, I renounce an infinite 
and eternal good, and consign myself to perdi- 
tion? 

Religion, it is acknowledged, brings its pains ; 
just because it comes from heaven to maintain a 
deadly conflict in the soul, with principles and 
dispositions which are rebellious against heaven, 
and destructive to the soul itself. Nothing can 
be more thoughtless or unknown, than the strain 
in which some have indulged in the recommen- 
dation of it, as if it were all facility and enjoy- 
ment. You have possibly heard or read grace- 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 71 

fill periods of descant on the subject, represent- 
ing to young people especially, that their unso- 
phisticated principles, their lively perception of 
the good and the fair, their generous sentiments, 
their uncontaminated affections, are so much in 
unison with the spirit of piety, that it is a mat- 
ter of the utmost ease for them, for such as you, 
to enter on the happiness of the religious life. 
Some little obstruction surmounted, one light 
spring made, and you regain the walks of Eden ! 
Did you believe it ? If you did, what unaccount- 
able caprice, what pure wantonness of perversity 
could it be that withheld you ? Or, if you were 
induced to make some short attempt in the way 
of experiment, did you not wonder how it should 
happen, by a peculiar untowardness in your case, 
that these youthful qualities, so congenial with 
piety, and so easy to be resolved into it, did 
nevertheless prove obstinately repugnant to the 
union ? Did you not think, Why then this aver- 
sion to read the Bible, or to retire for serious 
meditation and devotional exercise, or to any 
act of duty to be done simply in obedience to 
God? But the declamation which you had 
heard was idle rhetoric, or wretched ignorance. 
It must be acknowledged also, that much 
worthier teachers have, from a better cause, 
sometimes committed an error in underrating, 
or keeping nearly out of view, the austere cha- 



72 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

racteristics of religion, when inculcating it on 
youth. In their benevolent zeal to persuade, 
they were desirous of presenting a picture wholly 
attractive. And perhaps religion was become 
so decidedly their own chief happiness, that they 
could for the time forget the pains of the trans- 
formation through which it had become so. 
They have therefore made a representation, illu- 
minated nearly all over with delightful images. 
It is better that you should see the whole truth, 
and clearly understand that the agent which, in 
a capacity like that of a tutelary spirit, takes in 
charge a perverted, sinful, tempted being, to be 
humbled and reclaimed, taught many mortifying 
lessons, disciplined through a series of many 
corrections, reproved, restrained, and incited, 
and thus conducted onward, in advancing pre- 
paration for the happiness of another world, 
must be the inflictor of many pains during the 
progress of this beneficent guardianship. And 
it is not, as your aversion and murmurs would 
imply, the fault of religion that the case is so, 
but of that depraved nature which religion is 
designed and indispensable to redeem. 

So much for the darker side. But now, on 
the other hand, you can surely conceive, as com- 
patible with all this, a great preponderance of 
happiness in this life. And therefore you ought 
to take it on your conscience as a reproach for 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 73 

criminal want of thought or of honesty, that you 
will admit no other notion of religion than that 
of a gloomy melancholy thing. When you are 
turning away from it, as a grim and ghostly ob- 
ject, sent to encounter you for no more friendly 
purpose than to obstruct you, with threatening 
aspect, at every avenue to the scenes of delight, 
there ought to arise within your mind a sterner 
image, to condemn you for wilfully misjudging 
its character, and the service it has to offer you. 
For you can comprehend that there is attain- 
able, through the efficacy of religion, something 
far better than all you can hope ever to enjoy 
under the unhallowed advantage of rejecting it. 
Try faithfully whether you cannot understand, 
that it would be a great felicity to feel that your 
spirit is changing into conformity to a nobler 
model, growing into the only right constitution 
and image to be retained for ever ; to feel that 
the evil which infests it is shrinking and subdued 
under a mightier power ; to regard the best and 
greatest Being as no longer an appalling object, 
thought of with reluctance, and a wish that you 
could be for ever out of his sight and reach ; but 
now with emotions of love and confidence and 
hope, with an assurance of his mercy through 
Jesus Christ, with an experience of real commu- 
nication with him concerning all your interests, 
and with a consciousness that you are in activity 



74 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

for a master who will confer an infinite reward. 
Think whether it would not be happy to feel 
habitually a power maintaining a sacred control 
over your passions and your will, and preserving 
the current of your life unmingled with the 
world's pollutions. Imagine yourself animated 
at the close of each year, or shorter period, with 
a fervent gratitude to God, in the consideration 
what sins and follies he has saved you from thus 
much longer. Can you doubt whether that one 
emotion would really be worth more to an ac- 
countable being than all the pleasurable feelings 
which an irreligious person can have enjoyed 
during the whole interval ? 

Place before your mind a scheme of life, in 
which you shall see yourself committing, to the 
care and disposal of a beneficent Providence, the 
course of your life from the beginning, with a 
constant assurance that Sovereign Wisdom and 
Goodness will watch over all its movements and 
events, will conduct you through its perplexities 
and perils, will give you just so much temporal 
good that more would not be for your welfare, 
and will constrain all things which you are to 
pass through to co-operate to your ultimate hap- 
piness. Think also of enjoying the conscious- 
ness that you are not throwing the inestimable 
spring-season of your life away, but expending 
it so as to enrich every succeeding period, and 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. /O 

to ensure a fine setting sun upon the last. Say- 
honestly, whether all this be not something bet- 
ter than any scheme of life which you have in- 
dulged your imagination in shaping. Or, if you 
sometimes surrender yourself to the fascinations 
of romance and poetry, glowing over bright pic- 
tures of felicity in which religion has no place, 
make the experiment on your mind, in an hour 
of cooler feeling, whether you dare pronounce 
that it would be well to forego this happiness of 
religion, by a preference of that exhibited in 
these highly-coloured fictions, on the supposi- 
tion that they could, for you, be turned into 
reality. Yes, if these images could be turned 
into facts ; — but let me hint to you, that the very- 
exhibitors of these delectable fabrications out 
of air would scorn your folly in expecting any 
such realization. They would tell you, derid- 
ing your simplicity, that the shows which en- 
chant so much are the creation of their genius, 
exerted to a much finer purpose than that 
of representing an actual or even a possible 
order of things; that they consciously and inten- 
tionally abandon the ground on which plain 
mortality must toil along through ordinary good 
and evil, to range among imaginary elements, 
obsequious to their will. Ludicrous and juvenile 
indeed, they would say, must be the credulity of 
any one setting out to find somewhere, as a fact, 



76 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

what it requires the utmost of their inventive 
power but to figure out in fiction. And you may- 
perceive, if you have any sober observation, that 
no such felicity, wrought out of the mere mate- 
rials of this world, is actually in the possession 
of any of its inhabitants — its youthful inhabi- 
tants, I mean ; for yourselves will readily allow, 
that those of them who are grown old, and are 
going to leave it, must have a hopeless task in 
striving to make it yield them happiness, when 
it is shaking themselves off; shaking them off 
who have expended their life in idolizing it, and 
are clinging to it in the forlorn condition of feel- 
ing no hope or attraction toward a better. 

You do not deserve to know how to be happy, 
even in this life, if you will not be persuaded to 
make an honest effort of comparison between 
any scheme that would promise to make you so 
independently of religion, and the felicity which 
would attend a religious course commencing in 
youth. 

Do not think to defend yourself by saying that 
the representation how happy a youthful spirit 
might be in a devotement to religion, is greatly 
exaggerated. Besides that in theory it is evi- 
dently in the nature of that great cause, and in 
the gracious design and promise of Him from 
whom it descended, that it should confer ad- 
vantages surpassing all others, you should be 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 77 

willing to receive testimony as to fact from those 
who have gone effectually into the experiment. 
And you know, that they whom you verily be- 
lieve to have made the most competent trial, 
are the most decided, though not boastful, in 
their declaration; and that the tenor of their 
deportment proves their sincerity. Observe some 
of those young persons, (I hope you are not so 
unfortunate as not to know such,) whom you 
yourself believe to be most fully under the power 
of religion ; call them, if you will, its prisoners, 
its bondmen, its slaves ; some of your gay com- 
panions attempt to ridicule them as its fools; 
but do you observe whether their piety conduces 
to their happiness ? It is true, they are not 
happy after the manner in which your lighter 
friends account of happiness ; not happy, if the 
true signs of that state be a volatile spirit, a con- 
tinual glitter of mirth, a dissipation of mind and 
time among trifles, a dread of reflection and so- 
litude, an eager pursuit of amusements ; in short, 
a prevailing thoughtlessness, the chief suspen- 
sions of which are for the study of matters of 
appearance and fashion, the servile care of faith- 
fully imitating the habits and notions of a class, 
or perhaps the acquirement of accomplishments 
for show. It must be confessed, they have 
thoughts too grave, the sense of too weighty an 
interest, a conscience too solicitous, and purposes 



78 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

too high, to permit them any rivalry with the 
votaries of such felicity. Certainly they feel a 
dignity in their vocation, which denies them the 
pleasure of being frivolous. But you will see 
them often cheerful, and sometimes very ani- 
mated. And their animation is of a deeper tone 
than that of your sportive creatures ; it may 
have less of animal briskness, but there is more 
soul in it. It is the action and fire of the greater 
passions, directed to greater objects. Their emo- 
tions are more internal and cordial ; they can 
be cherished and abide within the heart, with a 
prolonged, deep, vital glow; while those which 
spring in the youthful minds devoid of reflection 
and religion, seem to give no pleasure but in 
being thrown off in volatile spirits at the sur- 
face. Did you think that these disciples of reli- 
gion must renounce the love of pleasure? Look, 
then, at their policy for securing it. The most 
unfortunate calculation for pleasure is to live 
expressly for it ; they live primarily for duty, and 
pleasure comes as a certain consequence. If 
you have but a cold apprehension of the degree 
of such pleasure, if you can but faintly conceive 
how it should be poignant, you can at least un- 
derstand that it must be genuine. And there is 
in it what may be called a principle of accumu- 
lation ; it does not vanish in the enjoyment, but, 
while passing as a sentiment, remains as a re- 






TO YOUNG PERSONS. 79 

flection, and grows into a store of complacent 
consciousness, which the mind retains as a pos- 
session left by what has been possessed. To 
have had such pleasure is pleasure, and is so still 
the more, the more of it is past. Whereas you 
are aware, if you have been at all observant of 
the feelings betrayed by the youthful children of 
folly, in the intervals of their delights, (and does 
nothing in your own experience obtrude the same 
testimony ?) that those delights, when past, are 
wholly gone, leaving nothing to go into a calm 
habitual sense of being happy. The pleasure is 
a blaze which consumes entirely the material on 
which it is lighted. So that the uncalculating 
youth, who seized a transient pleasure last week 
or yesterday, has no satisfaction from it to-day; 
but rather, perhaps, feels fretted with a sense 
of being cheated, and left in an irksome vacancy, 
from which he has no relief but in recovering 
his eagerness to pursue another, which is in the 
same manner to pass entirely away. And ob- 
serve, this is the description of the unenviable 
kind of felicity of the less criminal class of the 
young persons destitute of religion ; it represents 
the condition of those who surrender their spi- 
rits and life to vain and trifling interests, as 
distinguished from the grosser evil which we 
denominate vice. To insist that religion is bet- 
ter than that, as productive of happiness in this 



SO CONSIDERATIOxN'S ADDRESSED 

life, would seem but an impertinent pleading in 
its favour. 

Now be, for once, a thoughtful and serious 
being, willing to apprehend the contrast between 
all this and the state of a young person who feels 
a profound invariable conviction that he has 
made the right choice ; who finds that his grand 
purpose will bear the severest exercise of his 
judgment, and pleases him the most when he 
judges the most rigorously; who feels an elation 
of spirit in vowing an eternal fidelity to his ob- 
ject ; who beholds it undiminished in excellence, 
if there come a season of gloom over his other 
interests and prospects, when it proves to be not 
a thing of mere splendid colours, which vanish 
in a deepening shade, but of intrinsic lustre, a 
luminary which shines through, and shines the 
brighter for, the darkness. Not that this youth 
makes any pretension to be a stoic philosopher, 
serenely independent of the temporal good and 
evil attending or awaiting his progress into life, 
with no warm affections to the things in the 
scene around him, to be painfully mortified when 
adverse events and influences frustrate his hopes 
and projects. But his advantage over those of 
his coevals who have no better than such inter- 
ests, is, that he has enshrined his best affections 
in that one thing which does not partake of mor- 
tality and this world's uncertainty, and therefore 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 81 

but evinces its worthiness the more under the 
failure of every thing else that can fail. It is, 
like Him who is its Author and Guardian, " the 
same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." The 
pious youth, then, is not abandoned, for his chief 
enjoyment, to an endless fluctuation, alternating 
between delight and disgust, eager to seize, and 
wondering that the possession turns so soon to 
nothing ; all the while neglecting, or fearful to 
reflect, whether the whole plan be not essentially 
wrong : and thus fulfilling the decree, that " to 
him that trusteth in vanity, vanity shall be the 
recompence." 

Be assured there are young persons who can 
testify that this is their own experience of the 
happiness of religion, in so considerable a degree 
as to inspire an earnest wish to become more 
completely possessed by its power, from the con- 
viction that then they should be much happier 
still. And now do not let your mind evade the 
question, whether they would not be right in the 
feeling, that they would not, for all the world, 
be in the condition of those who never think of 
religion but as the enemy of youthful happiness. 
Some of them can well remember when they 
were themselves in that condition ; and they 
would at any time prefer instant death to the 
calamity of relapsing into it. No wonder, then, 
if you perceive them holding extremely light the 

F 



82 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

opinion of those, too many of their own age, who 
can look on them with a propensity to ridicule, 
or an affectation of piety. 

And, tell me, what do you think of such 
judges ? I conjecture you may have been under 
no small influence of the opinions of some rather 
like them, and would have deemed it a sad mis- 
fortune to be discountenanced in their commu- 
nity, or excluded from it by their aversion. But 
at what rate do you really estimate their judg- 
ment ? If they were to tell you plainly, that it 
is needless and unseasonable in youth to consi- 
der deeply of the best use of life, with a reference 
to both its continuance and conclusion ; to be- 
gin the expending of your time with a careful 
estimate of its value ; to feel the importance of 
your immortal nature, and be solicitous for its 
welfare ; to seek, as the highest good, the favour 
of the Almighty ; in short, to begin well, that you 
may go on well, and end well — if they were ex- 
pressly to tell you so, as their opinion, what 
would you think their opinion worth ? And 
should you not be ashamed of whatever it was 
in your own mind that could give that opinion 
any weight with you ? Think how it should be 
possible for you to feel, for a moment, any thing 
but contempt or pity for their very understand- 
ing. But if they did not tell you so, and could 
not deny that the contrary is true, what should 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 83 

you account of their conscience, their practical 
principle ? Or, if they never reflected enough 
to have any opinion at all of the matter, what 
should you deem of them altogether, as authori- 
ties and examples ? 

Perhaps your plea would be, that they are 
nevertheless full of vivacity, pleasant and joyous ; 
and that you must confess this captivates you so, 
that you have not thought of any such grave af- 
fair as that of thus taking account of them. But 
while you plead so, you know how flimsy is the 
consistence of this joyous mood of theirs, and by 
what means you could instantly break it up. 
It is like that thin slime of variegated hues 
which you sometimes see spread on the surface 
of polluted water, and which you can disperse 
into fragments by throwing in a twig or stone. 
When they are at the highest pitch of their spir- 
its, and apparently "shut up in measureless con- 
tent," you have but just to mention the doom we 
are all under to die; to name some young per- 
son of their acquaintance who lately died, per- 
haps in great distress and alarm for having been 
thoughtless like them: or to make an allusion 
to the final account — " For all these things God 
will bring thee into judgment ;"— you have but 
to do this, and you will quench, for the time, all 
their animation, and will see what awkward ef- 
forts they will have to make for its recovery. But, 



84 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

then, when you would plead, Why should you not 
be allowed to have, free and unalloyed, the plea- 
sure of your youth, with and like so many of your 
age, and be innocently happy, though without 
religion — does not your conscience smite you at 
the reflection, that you are coveting the partici- 
pation of a happiness which, in its liveliest hour, 
ten words, or five, would suffice to dash; and 
those words no other than such as every young 
person should often hear, and with a serious 
thought of their import ? 

There is but one topic more on which I will 
expostulate with you. Perhaps you will say, 
that your neglect of religion is only deferring it; 
that you are sensible it is a concern which you 
must attend to some time, and that your are fully 
resolved to do so in maturer or advanced life. 
And are you saying this with the images before 
your mind, of one and another, and still another, 
within the circle of your knowledge, whom you 
have seen cut off in youth ? Go, stand by 
their graves and repeat it there; for there is 
folly in it, if you could not on those spots repeat 
it with undisturbed assurance. Say, over those 
dead forms, now out of sight, but which you can 
so well in memory recall, such as you saw them, 
alert and blooming and smiling — say there de- 
liberately, that you know not why you should 
not be quite at your ease in delaying, to some 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 85 

future distant time, your application to that, 
without which you believe it to be a fearful thing 
to pass out of life. It is possible that some one 
of them, in approaching the last hour, expressed 
or conveyed to you an earnest admonition on 
this subject, conjuring you in the name of a 
friend dying in youth, to beware of the guilt and 
hazard of delay. If so, go to the grave of that 
one especially, and there pronounce, that an im- 
pertinence was uttered at a season when every 
sentence ought to be the voice of wisdom. Say, 
4 1 am wiser in this carelessness of my spirit 
than thou wast in the very solemnity of death.' 
Why should you shrink at the idea of doing this? 
And if you dare not do it, what verdict are you 
admitting, by implication, as the just one to be 
pronounced on your conduct ? 

But perhaps you are ready to reply, that this 
is pushing the argument beyond its real strength ; 
for that I seem to be assuming it as probable 
that your life will terminate in youth ; whereas, 
judging from a collective account of the actual 
duration of lives, I must know this is not the 
probability. Just so, no doubt, in reference to 
themselves, thought they whom you have seen 
vanish in their early day. And a few examples, 
or even one, of the treacherousness of the calcu- 
lation, should suffice to warn you not to hazard 
any thing of great moment on so menacing an 



8G CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

uncertainty. For, in all reason, when an infi- 
nitely important interest is depending, a mere 
possibility that your allotment may prove to be 
like theirs, is to be held of far greater weight on 
the one side, than the alleged probability of the 
contrary is on the other. The possibility of 
dying unprepared takes all the value from even 
the highest probability that there will be pro- 
longed time to prepare : plainly because there is 
no proportion between the fearfulness of such a 
hazard, and the precariousness of such a depen- 
dence. So that one day of the certain hazard 
may be safely asserted to be a greater thing 
against you, than the whole imaginary years, 
promised you by the probability, ought to be 
accounted of value for you. 

In minor concerns, there may be purposes not 
improperly formed by a healthy young person, 
which, though he could affect them now, he may 
defer upon a calculation of protracted life ; be- 
cause the degree of probability that his life will 
be protracted may be equal to any degree of im- 
portance or urgency that there is in the design ; 
so that he may be content to refer and trust it 
to that degree of probability, saying thus — I 
reckon on accomplishing such a purpose, if my 
life be prolonged. Or, in other words, it is such 
a design, that in the event of his life not being 
so prolonged, it will be no serious misfortune 



TO YOUXG- PERSONS. 87 

not to have accomplished it at all. He may be 
content to hold, as thus dependent on the con- 
tingency of lengthened life, a purpose, for ex- 
ample, of visiting some foreign country, of seek- 
ing a more agreeable locality to reside in, of 
acquiring some particular branch of not absolute- 
ly indispensable knowledge, and so of many other 
things. The object may be of as much less 
than the highest necessity to him, as he posses- 
ses less than a certainty of long surviving his 
youth. But when you acknowledge a concern 
to be all-important, and that a failure in it 
would be immeasureably disastrous, and avow a 
purpose not to fail in it, and yet can deliberately 
consign this purpose for its accomplishment to a 
contingent futurity, confidently reckoning on 
years which you confess may never be yours, as 
an adequate provision for it in reserve, this is, 
indeed my young friend it is, the worst insanity, 
because a criminal one. When the concern is 
so momentous, and any hazard from delay so 
formidable, this supposed probability of your life 
being prolonged should not be taken as more 
worth than it may prove to be worth. And 
what would it prove to be worth, in the event of 
your being, in this prime of your life, attacked 
suddenly by an illness threatening to be mortal? 
Do not trifle with the matter so wretchedly 
and wickedly, as to say, that, even in that event, 



88 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

perhaps you may have time allowed you for re- 
deeming what you are now wilfully losing, and 
for securing the safety of the great interest. 
Perhaps may ! why, this plainly means that you 
may not. But even if such an undeserved in- 
dulgence should be granted, and your perverse 
will be suddenly transformed to make the utmost 
use of it, are you not at this moment infallibly 
certain that it would be a cause of inexpressible 
grief to you to have made nothing of life, for its 
grand purpose, till on the point of breathing its 
last. Besides that, a consideration of what is 
the merely natural effect of the dread of death, 
might justly throw a painful uncertainty on the 
genuineness of the principle which excited your 
solicitudes and efforts. Besides, too, that you 
are perfectly aware severe illness is^a situation 
to the last degree unadapted to hard exercises of 
mind. 

If you can give your attention for a while to 
such representations, and still feel that you dare 
consign your most momentous interest to take 
the chance, if I may express it so, of your hav- 
ing time for it long after the season of youth, and 
can look undisturbed, undismayed, at the uncer- 
tainty where you shall be when the time so reck- 
oned upon shall arrive, it seems almost in vain to 
reason with you any further — except entreating 
you to turn one reflection on the state of that 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 89 

mind with which it is in vain to reason to such a 
purpose. Nevertheless, there are considerations 
which might be enforced upon you, even though 
you could have every degree of assurance, short 
of absolute certainty, that a time far oif in pros- 
spect will be yours in this life. — I am supposing 
all the while, that you really do intend, or think 
you:; intend, to apply yourself in earnest to the 
supreme concern at a more advanced period of 
your days. 

It has been already enough insisted on, that 
religion would make you far happier than any 
thing you can enjoy in the neglect of it, during 
youth itself, considered as one distinct stage ; but 
I would now speak of it as connected with the 
whole of life; allowing you to assume, if you will, 
that your life is to reach the full term of the age 
of man. 

You say this protracted life must and shall 
eventually be religious, confessing that otherwise 
all would be wrong. What do you mean by its 
being religious? If you have any just concep- 
tion of the nature of religion, while you are re- 
solving that your life shall some time assume that 
character, you are resolving it shall then be ser- 
vice to God. But now, what claims can there be 
that he will have on any later portion of your life, 
but has not on this earlier? Answer your con- 
sience ivhy it should be a duty to serve him then, 



CONSIDER ATIOXS ADDRESSED 

if it be no duty now. What is to bring you un- 
der an obligation from which you are now ex- 
empt? Is it that you will then be more depend- 
ent on him, or subsist more entirely on his bounty, 
or be more immediately and constantly in his 
presence? Or is it that you will have more vi- 
gour and liberty for his service ; that you will 
have less to do with the cares and grievances of 
the world ? Or is it that he has, in the com- 
munications of his will, less expressly required 
the services of youth, than of more advanced 
age ; giving, by implication, a licence to youth- 
ful spirits to forget him, and to take favours 
most largely at his hands, on an understanding 
that there is to be no present return ? No ; you 
readily say that all this is absurdity. You do 
not deny that there extends over your whole life 
one grand obligation of service to God; only, 
you have your own purposes to serve, and he 
must wait ! He has given you, for cultivation, 
a small tract of life, of time, on which you might 
raise precious things for offerings to him ; when 
you have exhausted its best faculties of produc- 
tion to gratify yourself, you will resign to him 
what it may be made to yield when reduced to 
the condition of sterility and weeds. But sup- 
posing you should become truly religious in the 
latter part of life, you can even now understand, 
that the very emphasis and intensity of the con- 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 91 

victions of that new state of mind will be, to feel 
how absolute was the duty, and how sublime 
would have been the happiness, of devoting every 
stage of life to the service of God. What, then, 
will be the reflections with which conscience 
will sting you, for having expended the most 
animated part of it on the principle, that what 
would be gained to him would be lost to you ? 

Again, when you are making to yourself these 
promises, that you certainly will some time in a 
yet distant part of life, apply yourself seriously 
to religion, you must mean that your will make 
it an earnest concern that your spirit, by that 
time advanced far toward the conclusion of its 
sojourn on earth, may attain a prepared state 
for removing to a superior and permanent scene 
of its existence. This is what you mean, is it 
not ? But then, how can it be, that you are 
not struck with a sense of something flagrantly 
absurd, in a plan of excluding from all but the 
latter portion of life, an affair standing related 
to so mighty a consequence ? Think of that 
existence during endless ages, an existence to 
commence in a condition determined for happi- 
ness or misery, by the state of mind winch shall 
have been formed in this introductory period. 
And is this the single case in which all rules of 
proportion may, without absurdity, and with im- 
punity, be set aside ? You intend, I will sup- 



92 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

pose, to apply as much as a few years, some- 
where yonder in the decline of life, to this great 
business of preparation ; that is to say, as much 
of the time within those years as will not be 
inevitably consumed by worldly cares and atten- 
tion to your infirmities. That is the measure 
of time to be placed over against immense 
futurity ? Behold those two, presented in such 
a relation. Look at that ocean, and at the 
competence of the time to prepare a vessel for 
launching upon it. Set the poor fragments of 
weeks and months in the years so appropriated 
in .your determination, set them in your view, 
against the ensuing millions of years or ages. 
Have you no perception of a frightful dispropor- 
tion? 

If you attempt an evasion by saying, But 
what would be the whole of this short life em- 
ployed in preparation, as set against that futu- 
rity? — the answer is that the whole term of life, 
diminutive as it is, for a preparatory introduc- 
tion to that stupendous sequel, is what our Cre- 
ator has allotted to us, leaving to us no respon- 
sibility that it is not longer, and is therefore a 
space of time which his blessing can render 
competent to the great purpose; but you are 
presuming to take a different and exceedingly 
diminished measure, on your own responsibility; 
apportioning off, as an adequate space for the 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 93 

preparation, a small section only of what he has 
assigned for it. This is in effect, telling him, 
that a far shorter time than the short one which 
he has allotted for the purpose will be quite 
enough for it ; and demanding of him that his 
blessing shall be conferred on his arbitrary un- 
sanctioned adjustment of you own, so as to make 
a shorter time suffice for the object than that 
which he has appointed and required to be de- 
voted to its accomplishment. But turn your 
thoughts upon your conduct, to reflect what an 
act of reason you are performing when you say, 
The whole of the time which God has assigned 
for a preparation to enter happily on an eternal 
existence is very short, and therefore a much 
shorter is sufficient ! 

And reflect what an estimate you are enter- 
taining of both the nature and importance of 
that preparation, while you can in ease or gay- 
ety see one month and year after another passing 
away, and anticipate that many more will pass, 
without contributing to it one particle. What- 
ever truth there may be to be learned, whatever 
discipline to be applied, whatever habits to be 
formed, whatever communications with heaven 
to be opened and maintained, and whatever may 
be lost, and whatever guilt may be incurred, by 
neglecting all this — still, this year, and many 
more yet to come, can well be spared from the 



94 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

concern, and surrendered wholly to any other 
demands. You can account with yourself that 
it is so much, and so much more, gained to your 
temporary interests, and lost only to the process 
for raising you to the eternal ones. At the end 
of one of these periods you have to reflect, a 
year of the prime and vigour of my life has pas- 
sed in a lively career, and is gone to be mine no 
more ; it might have effected for me, and left 
me possessing something of inestimable value 
toward what I own to be the supremely impor- 
tant business of my life; but it has left me no- 
thing. When I shall be constrained, at length, 
to apply myself to the business with all my 
might, I shall have to remember this year, with 
the consciousness that there is not with me one 
advantage derived from it in aid of my new and 
difficult undertaking; that, as relative to that 
concern, it was, by my own determination, flung 
with all its rich possibilities out of my existence; 
that I shall have no benefit from it to all eter- 
nity. You will have to reflect — I decided that 
the latter part of my life was all I would give 
to the great affair; I have accomplished my 
determination, by alienating from it the finest 
portion of my life ; I advance to old age, to 
death, to judgment, to eternity, under the volun- 
tary loss ; and whether, with the impoverished 
resources of this late remainder of my time, I 



TO YOUXG PERSONS. 95 

shall succeed or fail in the grand work, I shall 
for ever have to remember, that I have not 
thought it worth appropriating to it my most 
valuable years. 

So you will have to reflect. But now is the 
time in which you are actually doing that on 
which you will have so to reflect; you are de- 
liberately and daily adding something toward 
your being placed in that predicament. It is 
pressed upon you as the plainest truth in the 
world, that you ought to be, through the largest 
possible extent of your allotted time on earth, in 
a state adapted to an endless life; and you 
resolve, and act on your resolution, not to be in 
that state during many years of this introduc- 
tion. You lay a resolute hand on this invaluable 
portion, to withhold and defend it against the 
claims of that sovereign interest, practically pro- 
nouncing it better, that the commencing and 
animated stage of your existence should be alien- 
ated from all advantageous connection with the 
grand whole ; that it should not conduce to final 
good; that it should be for ever lost as to all 
that is to follow. Let it be enough, you seem 
to say, that the endless life to which I am ap- 
pointed and advancing, shall have, as I do intend, 
a small part of this introductory one yielded to a 
conformity with the solemnity of its character, 
and applied to secure its happiness ; and if its 



96 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

importance would insist on more, I will resist 
the encroachment. Eo authority of its require- 
ment shall wrest from me the liberty of casting 
as much as I please of this precious part of my 
time into an abyss, never to emerge in wealth or 
pleasure to me in futurity. And whatever that 
futurity of existence may be the poorer or the 
worse for so much lost to it, I am content to 
stand in my lot. My choice is rather to feel how 
much has been lost to my welfare then, than to 
forego the pleasure of following my inclinations 
now. 

And yet, at this very time, at any time, you 
will acknowledge that the interest of that futu- 
rity is the transcendent one, that it is vast and 
eternal, that it is critically depending, and that 
it is your own. what trivial things are the 
most lofty and solemn words, or their import 
either, to a mind that will not reflect, or cannot 
feel! 

If, nevertheless, you are still positive in the 
resolution, that you will devote your attention to 
religion at a more advanced period, I would 
represent to you that what you are meanwhile 
losing is not merely so much time. You deem 
there is a peculiar value and charm in this prime 
of your life, so that you rejoice you are not old 
nor middle-aged. You do so, even indepen- 
dently of any direct thought of being so much 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 97 

farther off from the latter end. And what is 
this so valued peculiarity of youth ? Doubtless 
it is the plenitude of life, the vigour and elasti- 
city of body and mind, the quickness of appre- 
hension, the liveliness of emotion, the energy of 
impulse to experiment and daring. Now, con- 
sider under what signal advantage, with respect 
to the subsequent progress, religion would com- 
mence its course in the strength of these ani- 
mated forces. It would be like taking a steed 
of fire for some noble enterprise, instead of one 
already tamed with time and labour, or nearly 
worn down. You would thus be borne onward 
a great length before the vigour of nature begins 
to remit, and would have acquired a principle of 
impulsion to advance after that peculiar vigour 
should have ceased. Your youth, at leaving 
you, would seem to send its spirit forward with 
you. The religious career thus commencing, 
would have all the advantages which a stream, 
of vast length of course, acquires from rising 
and running its first stage, on the slope of a lofty 
mountain, as compared with that which is put 
in motion on a tract little better than flat, and 
creeps heavily on for want of such an impulse 
from its origin. So important is it to the Pro- 
gress of religion, that it should have the utmost 
benefit from its Eise. 

Again, consider that a person prosecuting, in 

Q 



98 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

advanced life, a course which he deeply approves. 
has a peculiar pleasure in recollecting it as hav- 
ing been also the favourite interest of his youth : 
a pleasure additional to that of knowing that his 
early life was not thrown away. For all the 
pleasing associations of that season adhere and 
impart their charm to that which continues the 
approved favourite still. There is the memory 
of departed friends, the coeval or elder associates 
and promoters of his youthful piety, his allies in 
the best cause, whose images, in some solitary 
hour, seem to smile on him from the past, or 
from heaven. The remembered conscientious 
efforts and vows of self- dedication, augment his 
satisfaction in that which he still feels deserved 
them so well. The animated emotions, which he 
may sometimes regret that he cannot now revive 
in their vernal freshness, are still his, as having 
been given to that which is still his, to that which 
has been continuously his grand object. Thus 
what is now ripening into fruit, he can delight 
to recollect in the beauty and fragrance of its 
blossom. What a difference between this and 
the feelings of a man who, becoming religious in 
later life, finds himself by that very cause disse- 
vered, as it were, from his youth, except for pain- 
ful, self-reproachful reflection; who feels that its 
associations, instead of conveying a genial warmth 
to him along an uninterrupted train of piety to 



TO YOUNG PERSOXS. 99 

the present time, are gone away in eonneetion 
with what he regards as the dishonour and cala- 
mity of his existence; like the gardens that once 
were on a tract which a man has lost from his 
estate by subsidence into the sea! 

But still further: while you are resolving to 
adopt the right plan some time, and flattering 
yourself that thus there will have been, on the 
whole, and in the conclusion of life's account, a 
safe preponderance in favour of religion, you are 
to be admonished that the absence of it, in the 
earlier part of life, is something more, and worse, 
than simply so much lost to that account. It is 
not only that you are not religious during the 
time that you shall postpone that concern ; not 
only that you are rendering so much of life, with 
respect to that, a mere blank; you are all the 
while aggravating the difficulty, and lessening 
the probability, of your being religious at a later 
period, or ever. Are you so thoughtless or 
unknowing as to fancy that a long course of 
estrangement from this interest, of aversion to 
it, of resistance against its claims, of suppression 
of the remonstrances of conscience in its behalf, 
is to leave jou in a kind of neutral state, impar- 
tial to admit at length the conviction that now 
it is high time, and easily convertible into a 
Christian spirit? Consider that all this time 
you are forming the habits which, when inveter- 



100 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

ately established, will either be invincibly upon 
you through life, or require a mighty wrench to 
emancipate you. This refusal to think, this 
revolting from any attempt at self-examination, 
this averting of your attention from serious books, 
this declining to seek the Divine favour and 
assistance by prayer, this projecting of schemes 
bearing no regard to that favour, and which are 
not to need that assistance, this eagerness to seize 
each transitory pleasure, this preference of com- 
panions who would like you the worse if they 
thought you feared God or cared for your eternal 
welfare; — these dispositions, prolonged in a suc- 
cession of your willing acquiescences in them, 
will grow into a settled constitution of your soul, 
which will thus become its own inexorable tyrant. 
The habit so forming will draw into it all the 
affections, the workings of imagination, and the 
trains of thought; will so possess itself of them, 
that in it alone they will live, and move, and have 
their being. It will have a strong unremitting 
propensity to grow entire, so as to leave nothing 
unpreoccupied in the mind, for any opposing 
agent to take hold on, in order to counteract it; 
as if it were instinctively apprehensive of the effect 
of protests from conscience, or visitings from the 
powers of heaven, or intimations from the realm 
of death; and therefore intent on forming the 
sentiments of the soul to such a consistence and 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 101 

coalition, as shall leave none of them free to 
desert at the voice of these summon ers. 

And if you would reflect, you would be sen- 
sible that, in effect, you ivish the case to be just 
so. Do not practise any dissimulation with 
yourself on the subject. In making the resolu- 
tion that some time (and now, honestly, is not 
that a time willingly regarded as far off?) that 
some time you will apply yourself to religion, 
you plainly intend that you will not be religious, 
that you will be estranged from religion, till then. 
But, in resolving that it shall not command you, 
you necessarily must wish that neither shall it 
disturb you. You wish that, during all the time, 
no interfering, opposing, alarming principle may 
abide in your mind; because you desire to enjoy 
fully, and in peace, the kind of happiness which 
you are to exclude religion in order to enjoy. 
You are wishing, then, in effect, that your affec- 
tions and tastes may be entirely in harmony with 
a system of life devoid of religion, that your judg- 
ment may accommodate itself not to condemn 
your proceeding, and that your conscience should 
either be beguiled to acquiesce, or repose in a 
long deep sleep. That is to say, while you are 
resolving that at some advanced period you will 
be religious, you are also resolving that, during 
the long preceding time, you will yield yourself 
to a process for consolidating those very habits 9 



102 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

which will fix your mind in a confirmed antipa- 
thy to religion. You are intending to enter at 
last on consecrated ground and yet are surren- 
dering yourself to a power, wilich will hold you 
back with the grasp of a fiend when you attempt 
to approach its border. You presume that the 
latter stage of your journey shall be an ascent to 
heaven, and yet, in this earlier one, you deliber- 
ately choose a track in which you can calculate 
how each downward step goes in aggravation of 
the arduousness of that ascent, if you shall indeed 
ever attempt it; as if a man who had to reach 
the summit of a vast mountain, and might do it 
on one side by a long, gradual, and compara- 
tively gentle declivity, should prefer essaying it 
on that other side, where, descending first to a 
great depth to reach its base, he must then climb 
its precipices. Whatever I am now gaining, he 
might say to himself, in the way of pleasant in- 
dulgence in this descent, is so much that I shall 
find to have been gained against me by the* diffi- 
culty on yonder steep. 

It may be easy for you to have credit with 
yourself in denying, in a light inconsiderate wa} r , 
that you are actually adopting a plan of such 
monstrous absurdity. You will say, that you 
are far from being conscious of any wish to ag- 
gravate the future difficulty of applying your 
mind in good earnest to religion. But this is 






TO IOTOs'G PERSONS. 103 

an evasion, of the thoughtlessness or disingenu- 
ousness of which you ought to be more than 
ashamed. You are bound to consider, that, in 
adopting a plan, you are accountable for every 
thing which is necessarily involved in it. And 
when your plan is that of spending an indefinite, 
but large portion of your life exempt from reli- 
gion, you necessarily wish to have the unalloyed 
benefit of your privilege. (But what terms I am 
using !) That clear advantage you cannot have, 
if invaded by convictions, if harassed by consci- 
ence, if kept in awe of the invisible Observer, if 
lightened upon by intimations of a judgment to 
come. You necessarily wish an immunity from 
all this, in the prosecution of your scheme. But, 
therefore, by implication, you wish for that 
which alone can so exempt you ; and that is no 
other than such a hardened state of mind, such 
an oblivion habitually, and such a power of de- 
fiance occasionally, as will constitute, when fully 
confirmed, a most fatal aversion and unadapted- 
ness to that transfer of your thoughts and affec- 
tions to religion, on Avhich you are presuming as 
the ultimate resource. 

And it is probable that, if you had self-obser- 
vation enough, you might perceive this process 
toward a confirmed state is going on. Have 
you no consciousness, that the last two or three 
vears of vour neglect of religion have rendered 



104 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

your disinclination to it more positive ? May 
there not be a more sensible re-action against 
its remonstrances ? If the earlier feeling was 
that of mere carelessness about the subject, has 
it in no degree changed to the stronger one of 
aversion ? Perhaps a serious book, (like this of 
the Rise and Progress of Religion,) which would 
at a former time have been lightly put aside, as 
what no way concerned you, would now be re- 
garded with a pointed sentiment of dislike, almost 
of hostility, as against an ungracious intruder, 
come, like the ancient prophet to the impious 
king, "to speak no good of you but evil." Perhaps 
you find that you can more promptly set aside 
any scruples of conscience that rise to obstruct 
you in the way of your inclinations. And per- 
haps, as a reward — an advantage, do you deem 
it ? — of this boldness you are now seldomer in- 
commoded by such scruples. So that, though 
your feelings clash more unequivocally with the 
dictates of religion, when it does arrest your 
attention, you are stronger to resist, and more 
expert to elude, and suffer, on the whole, less of 
the trouble of its interference. 

This is quite the natural course; but you 
ought to be aware of its progress. If you abso- 
lutely will proceed on this plan, of retaining a 
purpose in favour of religion, but deferring it to 
some future distant time, I wish you would be 



TO YOUtfG PERSOXS. 105 

induced to keep yourself apprised of its effect in 
you, by making now and then an experiment, in 
the way of test, on the temper of your mind. 
Will you be advised to take occasionally some 
very serious and cogent books on the subject of 
personal religion — the one just named, or any 
other, or some peculiarly solemn part of the 
Bible, to read it a little while, and watch in 
what manner your inmost feeling responds to it? 
Do this again after an interval, and observe 
whether the displacency, the repugnance of your 
heart be less, — whether it be not sensibly more. 
In an hour when you are left alone, with a per- 
fect freedom to remain for a while in this retire- 
ment, recollect the duty of approaching your 
Heavenly Father, with thanks, confessions, and 
supplications: and observe the movement of 
your soul under this thought in this opportune 
hour. Do the same in subsequent opportuni- 
ties, and see whether the indisposition be not in- 
creased rather than diminished. And if the fact 
be so, what a melancholy phenomenon — a little 
dependent spirit voluntarily receding from its 
beneficent Creator ; directing its progress away 
from the eternal Source of light and life and joy; 
and that on a vain presumption of being under 
the comet's law of returning at last to the sun ! 
In a similar manner, at successive intervals, try 
the effect, on the temperament of your mind, of 



106 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

some remembered example of eminent piety in 
youth, of the recollection of former youthful 
associates dead, or of the solemn idea of your 
own death, and your continual approximation 
toward it ; and see whether, under these appli- 
cations, there will not be betrayed, in the habit 
of your feelings, an increasing alienation from 
religion. And yet you are the person to indulge 
an easy confidence, that, after you shall have 
gone on many years thus confirming the es- 
trangement and aversion from it, you shall easily 
turn to it as your best friend ! 

Might it not be well to enforce it on yourself 
as a rule, That this your resolution to be religi- 
ous some time, shall be distinctly recalled to 
mind in each successive instance of your doing 
what tends to its frustration ? When you find 
yourself making an effort to banish the shade of 
pensive feeling or grave reflection, which any 
circumstance of the time may have had power to 
throw over you, say to yourself, It is I, never- 
theless, that am to be religious, and therefore to 
cherish such thoughts and emotions, in a season 
yet to come. If you perceive yourself carefully 
avoiding " the house of mourning," even though 
it be your friends that are visited there with 
sickness or death, say again, I am one day, how- 
ever, to entertain and welcome that religion 
which would be there, at this time, enforced on 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 107 

me with such powerful admonition. When 
you are entering a gay thoughtless party, to 
mingle in such a hilarity as any visitings of reli- 
gious reflection would quell, say to yourself, 
That very thing which would freeze this ani- 
mation of theirs and mine, shall, after a while, 
be the grand solace of my heart ; and this is the 
way I am taking to prepare myself for its being 
so ! If you go so far as to endure voluntarily, 
and without repugnance, society where serious 
subjects and pious men are turned to jest, and 
the most awful names taken in vain, say, I am 
training myself here, through familiarity with 
irreligion, to give my utmost reverence and af- 
fection to that of which I am thus abetting the 
scorn and profanation. If you are projecting a 
scheme for the occupation and satisfaction of a 
considerable portion of your life, but cast upon 
a principle and plan evidently unfavourable to 
your spiritual welfare, reflect on it, and say 
again, There is another scheme to be afterwards 
undertaken, into which I shall pass with all the 
advantage of having wholly excluded the care of 
it from this prior one : when my lighter juvenile 
unconcern about religion shall have settled into 
an utter estrangement, as a part of the habit 
confirmed through my long and complete en- 
grossment by a worldly project, then I shall need 
but one touch of conviction, but one recollection 



108 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

of my former vow, but one act of my will, to 
throw my spirit free, and become religious en- 
ough for death and for heaven. 

I repeat to you, that by this course of pro- 
crastination, this scheme of reversionary piety, 
you are not simply losing so much with regard 
to the greatest affair, but are also taking strong 
security against yourself that you shall not save 
the remainder. The worthless or noxious growth 
which you suffer to overspread the first large 
division of your allotted tract of time, is contin- 
ually extending its roots far forward, and will 
scatter its seeds thickly over all the space be- 
yond. Consider how well, even at your age, 
you are informed of it as a truth, that whatever 
entwines itself with the youthful feelings, main- 
tains a strange tenacity, and seems to insinuate 
into the vitality of the being. How important 
to watch, lest what is thus combining with its 
life, should contain a principle of moral death ! 
Consider, that in this earlier period you are pe- 
culiarly disposed to entertain social partialities, 
are perhaps giving yourself to companionship 
and friendships, or contracting more intimate 
relations, which must have an important influ- 
ence on the growing formation of your mind in- 
to its decided character, and on the consequent 
tenor of your life. Now, when this social attrac- 
tion combines several parties destitute of reli- 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. 109 

gion, they are in effect giving mutual pledges 
never to be religious ; since they are giving and 
receiving the whole influence of their friendship, 
to fix their minds in that state in which they are 
at present pleased with one another ; that is to 
say, in a state of aversion to religion. And sup- 
posing that each of them were, nevertheless, like 
you, intending to be religious some time, we can- 
not well conceive any fairer occasion for the 
scoff of a malignant spirit^ than to see them thus 
all in a league to frustrate what each of them 
believes he intends. 

This same intention, you have no reason to 
doubt, has been entertained, in earlier years, by 
many whom you now see advanced to the middle 
or the decline of life, without having done any 
thing toward its accomplishment. Yet they 
were, in their time, as confident as you are now. 
Should not this alarm you ? Some of them may 
have yielded up the design, not by any express act 
of renouncement, but insensibly, in the gradual 
hardening of their consciences, their complete 
immersion in the world, and assimilation to its 
spirit ; with the addition, in too many cases, of 
the practice of some more positive kind of sin. 
Many of them, however, are perhaps still re- 
taining the purpose, inert and buried under an 
accumulation of repressive habits ; like a seed 
artificially kept torpid, in order that it may be 



110 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

quickened into germination at a preferable time. 
The consciousness that they are mortal, and 
must be forced at last out of all that now occu- 
pies and pleases them, is soothed to repose in 
this presumption, that they shall bring a reserved 
expedient into action, before the neglect of it be 
fatal. But answer honestly, Do you think it 
probable that they will ? Do you expect, if you 
should live to see them forward a few years fur- 
ther — do you expect to see them withdrawing 
their engrossed affections, breaking asunder their 
inveterate habits, and doing a great thing which 
they have systematically and wilfully prepared 
themselves not to do, that is, devoting themselves 
to God and the care of their salvation ? Per- 
haps you have allowed yourselves to imagine 
that you, after having made a considerable pro- 
gress in years, shall become, at every advance, 
proportionally more and more sensible of the 
shortening of life, and shall necessarily behold 
nearer the visage of death, presented through a 
clearer medium, and with enlarging and more 
denned features. How can it, you may have 
said, be otherwise, in the exercise of mere com- 
mon sense, than that this approach toward the 
end should aggravate upon me the cogency of 
my grand duty ? Do, then, look again at the 
multitude of examples around you, and see what 
avails them this obvious arithmetic of time. You 



TO YOUNG PERSONS. Ill 

see persons with whose names you and your 
companions, with a tacit pleasure of contrast in 
your favour, couple the epithet " old," still as 
heedlessly and confidently as yourselves, reckon- 
ing on time enough yet, to continue deferring 
the grand business, without peril of its being left 
undone. If their youthful " trust in their own 
heart," that they would ultimately apply them- 
selves to the indispensable business, fixed that 
determination on about some given point or pe- 
riod in their future life, they can pass, or perhaps 
have passed that period, with the same facility 
of neglect as any former one, finding nothing to 
stop them there with the peremptory exaction to 
perform their vow. The lying spirit which had 
promised to meet them at the assigned spot, to 
conduct them thenceforward toward heaven, 
appears not on the ground when they arrive 
there, unless to tell them that another stage, still 
further on, will be more advantageous for com- 
mencing the enterprise. You look at the marks 
of time on their countenances, recollect them 
perhaps as in mature or middle age, when you 
were in infancy, and wonder they can yield 
themselves to such an imposition ; and all this 
without a single reflection, that you are putting 
yourself in the train of the same delusion. How 
can they act so, you say, when I feel so certain 
of the justness of my determination to act other- 



112 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

wise, on the strength of my conviction of the 
ultimate necessity of religion ? Be you assured 
there is no more fatal betrayer than a right and 
excellent principle adopted, but consigned to 
future time and more favourable inclination for 
being carried into action. The consciousness 
that you are certainly keeping a good resolution, 
only deferred to await a "more convenient sea- 
son," will help you to indulge a fallacious secu- 
rity, while every season for accomplishing it is 
passing away. Through one period of your time 
after another, it will appear to you infallibly 
efficacious for the next ; and no period will come 
as that from which you cannot look forward to 
still another. And this your purpose, suspended 
as it were in advance over your course, as a ma- 
lign imitation, by infernal art, of the star which 
the sages followed to find the Saviour of the 
world, will probably lead you on, still confiding 
that it must stand arrested at the spot where 
you shall accept the grace of that Eedeemer, till 
you are drawn to a precipice, where your deluder 
will vanish and you will fall. 

All the latter course of this pleading has pro- 
ceeded on the supposition that you may have a 
protracted life. It has been an attempt to repre- 
sent to you that even if you might be allowed to 
assume a very strong probability, little short of 
certainty, of reaching the full term of human 



TO YOUXG PERSOXS. 113 

life — nay, that if you were certain you shall, 
your scheme of exempting its earlier portion from 
religion, on a promise to yourself and to God, of 
taking that for your chief concern at a more 
advanced stage, would still be absurd and wic- 
ked, and most dangerous. But I warn you 
again, do not so criminally trifle with your own 
reason as to proceed on any such calculation, in 
sight and in contempt of the thousand instances 
of your fellow-mortals dying in youth, and in 
the immediately following stage. 

Now will you, my young friend, lay such con- 
siderations to heart ; or will you rather have it 
to remember, perhaps when all too late, that 
they were pressed upon you in vain ? 



114 



CHAPTER IV. 



CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED TO MEN OF THE WORLD 
ON THE DANGER OF A TOO EXCLUSIVE DEVOTEDNESS 
TO BUSINESS AND OTHER WORLDLY PURSUITS TO 
THE NEGLECT OF THE GREAT AND PARAMOUNT IN- 
TERESTS OF RELIGION. 

THE preceding expostulation, conceived as 
what might have been addressed to some 
one of the many young persons who may, in 
various times and places, have had their atten- 
tion drawn for a moment to this treatise of the 
Rise and Progress of Religion, and averted by 
the seriousness of its purport, has been prolonged 
so exceedingly far beyond our intention, and its 
due proportion, that but little space is fairly left 
for exemplifying, in other forms, the trains of 
instructive reflection that might take rise from 
imagining what has happened in connection with 
the book. We therefore leave it for an exercise 
of the reader's own thoughts, if he should deem 
there is any profit in such an employment of 
them, to imagine in what manner a variety of 



CONSIDERATIONS, ETC. 115 

individuals, each a specimen of the character of 
a class, may be supposed to have noticed the book 
at one time or another; what feeling was excit- 
ed at the sight, or transient inspection, or per- 
usal of it: how they were affected towards its 
subject, so inculcated; what influence, if any, it 
had on their determinations: and to conceive, in 
each case respectively, what would have been 
the appropriate admonitions, which it had been 
well if there had been any intelligent and persua- 
sive friend opportunely to offer. What such a 
friend might pertinently have said in any of those 
instances, is of course the advice or remonstrance 
applicable in any similar cases, occurring now 
and hereafter, among the incalculably numerous 
persons whose attention must be attracted, more 
or less, to a work which is in still widening cir- 
culation! 

Foregoing, then, the design of specifying seve- 
ral other discriminated examples, we will pro- 
tract this discourse only a little further, by sup- 
posing one more instance ; an example, however, 
of a character unhappily far too generally pre- 
valent to be called that of a class. We may 
describe the person as a mere man of the world 
— yet not in the worst sense of that designation; 
for we do not suppose him an abandoned profli- 
gate, trampling and spurning the most obvious 
rules of social morality; nor a scoffer at religion; 



116 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

nor a scorner, in a virulent spirit, of pious men ; 
but devoted to this world, idolizing it in his af- 
fections, exerting all his active energy in its pur- 
suits, surrendering his whole being to mingle 
with its interests and be conformed to its tem- 
per; and therefore habitually forgetting the 
other world, and all the grand economy of 
truths, overtures, means, preparations, and cares 
relating to it. He might have been in youth 
just the same kind of person as the one expostu- 
lated with in the preceding pages: we are sup- 
posing him past that age, and all that belongs 
peculiarly to its character; yet not necessarily 
as very far advanced in life. 

It cannot have failed to happen that many 
such persons have been accosted, as it were, by 
the spirit of our pious and benevolent author in 
the vehicle of his book. If we may conjecture 
that fifty thousand copies have been diffused 
among all orders of society, and have obtained, 
through choice or accident, with approbation or 
under sufferance, a position in almost so many 
abodes, our fancy has a warrant to figure an in- 
definite variety of circumstances, under which 
these volumes have fallen in contact with such 
men of the world. 

There may have been the case of such a man's 
unwittingly laying his hand on the book, as one 
of a number which had been left him by a re- 



TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 117 

ligious parent, opening to see what it was, as not 
recognizing it by its exterior, and being smitten 
with something like an electric shock at the sud- 
den reflection, that for ten, twenty, or thirty 
years since that parent's death, he has been no 
better for this or any other religious book. 
Another such man, on happening to fix his eye 
on the volume, has been struck with the recollec- 
tion, inflicting perhaps a twinge of mental pain, 
that there was a time, a transient one, long since, 
in his youth, when he felt, some convictions and 
emotions of a religious tendency ; and procured 
this identical book in aid of those salutary move- 
ments in his mind. Another may have chanced 
to notice it among books, which a better care 
than his had provided for the instruction of the 
young people of his own family; and has per- 
haps had the momentary thought — what, then, 
are these young men and women to be reminded 
of religion, while / forget it ? Another may have 
retained, from early instruction, accompanied by 
example, a certain impression, resting on his 
mind somewhat like a superstition, that the Sun- 
day ought to be, in some degree, unlike his oth- 
er days, and a small portion of it given to seri- 
ous reading; and in looking for a book of that 
character, he may have happened to take this, 
and to read enough of it to cause him a disquiet- 
ed consciousness, or a suspicion that his spirit 



118 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

and habits are not quite in the right. The case 
may have occurred, that such a man has caught 
sight of this book in the recess of an apartment 
where he and others were waiting to follow a 
dead person to the grave: and that, under a 
passing gleam of right apprehension and kind 
feeling, he internally said, { The Progress of Re- 
ligion — I hope it was that road that the deceased 
took in his way to the world whither he is gone, 
for else it were ill with him now.' 

It may seem as if these suppositions do not 
quite agree with the general description of the 
character, as altogether estranged from religion. 
Such involuntary and transitory excitements of 
a recognition of that great interest, are not, 
however, incompatible with a prevailing decided 
neglect and alienation; but, in truth, the conjec- 
tures may justly fall into a less charitable train. 
We suppose the case of such a man's observing 
that the book had been offered to the attention 
of the younger branches of his family, and ad- 
mitting a slight reflection of relf-rebuke. But 
it is not less likely to have happened, that a 
man of this character, on perceiving such a cir- 
cumstance, has signified displeasure at this ex- 
pedient for rendering the happy young creatures 
prematurely grave and melancholy, extinguish- 
ing, he said, their delightful vivacity, (which 
would soon enough be repressed by the cares and 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 119 

troubles of life,) by unseasonable apprehensions 
about the welfare of their souls. It is no im- 
probable case, that the book may have come in 
the way of such a man, just about the time when 
he has seen, or perhaps experienced to his injury, 
an instance of want of principle in some person 
making high pretensions to religion; and that 
he said, with irritation and a frown, I think I 
may as well let this affair of religion alone, till 
I see more integrity in those who profess to be 
so deep in it. The main matter of duty is, to 
be upright in our transactions; and, thank God, 
I am that without any canting pretensions to 
saintship. Another man of this description may 
have accidentally looked into the book a little 
while, and then laid it aside, evading all personal 
application with the thoughtless sentiment, That 
is all very well for persons whose situation allows 
them to give themselves up to retirement and 
thinking; but men like me have far too much to 
do with the practical business of life to have lei- 
sure for attending to the subject. ' The book 
may have obtruded itself on the notice of a man 
deliberating whether to add a new worldly un- 
dertaking to those he was involved in already, 
an undertaking not necessary, but calculated to 
make a little more of the world his own. And 
might it not be supposed that such a monitory 
intervention might contribute to suspend the 



120 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

affirmative decision, by force of the question, 
whether this concern, of religion, did not de- 
mand to take precedence of every other new un- 
dertaking .? No: the question struck but fee- 
bly on his mind ; the suggestion was easily 
cleared away from interference with his debat- 
ing thoughts ; religion could be attended to at 
any time indifferently ; whereas, now or never 
was the time for the project which was warm- 
ing his desires. The book was thrown by, and 
the subject vanished. 

It is familiar to observation, that men of the 
world have an arrogant estimate of worldly wis- 
dom, though the sphere of its objects be so li- 
mited, and the term of its employment and pro- 
fit so short. "Never did the adepts in abstract 
philosophy or in science indulge a prouder con- 
sciousness in virtue of living and reigning in the 
intellectual world, than these men do on the 
strength of being shrewd and efficient in the 
judgment and conduct of affairs. Suppose, 
then, one of them, on returning from a place of 
resort and competition, where he has excelled 
in the discussion or transaction of some of these 
affairs, to have been led by any chance to open 
such a book, and to have glanced over a few 
sentences or paragraphs. Pie probably did not 
waste even his contempt in more tban a few 
brief expressions to this effect : — These men, all 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 121 

for religion, talk of the insignificance of what 
they call earthly things, the vanity of the world, 
the Christian's vocation to live above it, the 
meanness of its concerns compared with their 
nobler pursuits; and all the while they know 
nothing about it. Too fantastic and feeble for 
the vigorous activities of our department, let 
them be indulged in their notion that they have 
vastly superior employments in their own. It 
were hard to deny them the pleasure of de- 
claiming against that which they do not under 
stand, and in which they would make a miser- 
able figure in attempting to act a part. Ano- 
ther man of the worldly character, in a less 
supercilious temper, may be supposed to have 
looked a little into the book with a feeling like 
this : — One does wish one could manage to have 
some commodious sort or share of religion that 
would not cost much trouble, and would put one 
in safety as to future consequences. But reli- 
gion as described here, meets me as an inquisi- 
tor and a tyrant. It would force a judicial 
investigation through my whole soul, and that 
only to expose, condemn, and affright me ; in- 
sists on some strange revolution in my princi- 
ples and feelings ; demands an unconditional, 
unlimited submission, to a jurisdiction which 
will leave nothing within me or without me, at 
my own free disposal ; and, in short, insists on 



122 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

setting the main purposes of my life in a new 
direction. This is not to be endured. If I 
must at last, for safety's sake, submit on such 
terms, let me enjoy my exemption as long as I 
can or dare. 

But a man of the world may be a formalist : 
maythinkthat no such religion can everhe neces- 
sary, and that he has a sufficient one in his re- 
gular performance of an order of mere external 
observances. Somewhere, no doubt, there is a 
copy of the book in question which such a man 
has inspected, with eyes now perhaps closed for 
ever ; and we can figure the aspect (though the 
pages do not reflect the image) of alternate dis- 
dain and indignation at what he pronounced to 
be rank enthusiasm, with self-congratulation on 
knowing a far easier method of satisfying the 
requirements of his Creator. 

We might go on indefinitely recounting, in 
probable conjecture, the modes in which the 
worldly spirit has been affected at coming in 
contact with this vehicle of serious admonition. 
And what a manifestation would be given of the 
nature of that spirit, if, from unknown times 
and places, one twentieth part would be recalled 
of the instances in which its quality has been 
the most remarkably betrayed under such a 
test ? We will describe but one example more. 
It is not to be doubted that this production of 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 123 

pious zeal has at some time fallen in the way of 
a person who had continued faithfully devoted 
to the world quite to old age. Perhaps it met 
his notice at the time when he was just up- 
on making the utmost exertion of his declin- 
ing strength, and with an eagerness equal to any 
passion of his youth, to accomplish the conclud- 
ing, the crowning part of a long-wrought pro- 
ject, for bringing within his grasp a material 
acquisition of emolument or distinction; in other 
words, for gaining more possessions against the 
day of losing them, and more decorations against 
the day of putting them off. And perhaps he 
did not plainly say, Religion, with all that de- 
pends on it, must take its chance ; I never yet 
have been disposed to forego any thing for its 
sake, nor am I now. But we may confidently 
suppose him to liave said in effect, I must at all 
events complete this affair in hand, whatever 
become of any thing else. And who knows 
but he was smitten with death before either the 
momentous something else obtained his atten- 
tion, or the project, for the sake of which he re- 
fused it, was accomplished ? Or we may ima- 
gine the occurrence happening to a man in a 
more prostrate state of feeling, when a long- 
prosecuted scheme had failed, too late in his 
life for him to form a new one ; or about the 
time that encreasing infirmity had constrained 



124 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

him to the dreaded task of making his will ; or 
when he had recently seen his most trusty co- 
operator, or his nearest relation of his own age, 
or even the last of his children, sink into the 
grave. And would it be too hard upon human 
nature, or an uncharitable judgment of the tem- 
per of a mind grown old in devotedness to the 
world, to suppose that, even in circumstances 
like these, the man still could not resolve on so 
serious a thing as attention to religion ? No : 
we can believe that he revolted from the urgent 
enforcement of the subject ; felt as if any other 
way of disposing of it were preferable to that of 
thinking of it ; and threw aside the book. He 
had recourse to some expedients of change and 
amusement, to relieve his drooping spirits and 
darkening days; or, perhaps he made a strife to 
force his decaying powers to some farther and 
superfluous exertions in the world's business. 
It may even be conceived that the very terms 
" Rise and Progress," suggesting the idea of 
long and laborious continuance, excited a gloomy 
sense of the want of commensurateness between 
such a lengthened process, and his now shor- 
tened life ; and that, through a lamentable per- 
versity, the sadness of this consideration, instead 
of alarming him to an instant application to the 
grand concern, made him the more recoil from 
it, and but added to the infatuation of his con- 



TO MEtf OF TIIE WORLD. 125 

suming the short remainder of his life as he had 
consumed all before. 

-Now, in each of all these instances, an intel- 
ligent Christian friend might have remonstrated 
in terms specially adapted to the individual's 
state of mind, modifying the general argument 
for religion to meet the cast of irreligious feel- 
ing in the particular case. And a discerning 
and skilful pleader in this good cause may 
sometimes seize upon the peculiar mode of feel- 
ing, in such a manner as to turn it to account, 
availing himself of it to give his remonstrance 
something of the point and appropriation of the 
argumentum ad hominem. But we shall con- 
tent ourselves with a short address of the nature 
of a plain general expostulation, applicable to 
the general qualities of the worldly character. 

It is true, that the spirit required in any ef- 
fort so directed, is not a little repressed by a 
sentiment partaking of despondency. There is 
no evading the thought, Why should words and 
arguments and images of unseen things and ad- 
jurations be expended on that man, on those 
men ? They will continue the same. Why 
should Religion, like Cassandra, waste her dic- 
tates and premonitions on a hopeless determina- 
tion to the wrong ? How can it be worth while 
to be trying, as if it had so much as even the 
uncertainty of an experiment, how many mis- 



126 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

siles will rebound from a rock, or disappear in 
a swamp; or how many times the taper may 
burn out in the vain attempt to kindle a fire in 
materials which contain no fuel? 

But we would wish to turn this very fact it- 
self, of the dispirited sentiment which damps the 
Christian pleader's efforts to press religion on the 
attention of devoted men of the world, into a 
topic of admonition to them. How comes it to 
pass, we might say to them, that a person, whose 
own mind is possessed with the most absolute 
and mighty conviction of the importance of reli- 
gion, cannot help feeling it nearly a forlorn at- 
tempt to awaken any sense of that importance 
in you ? Has he good cause for this despon- 
dence? Is it his experience, his just estimate of 
the character of your minds and habits, that 
makes him feel so ; and does your self-knowledge 
tell you it would be too sanguine for him to feel 
otherwise? Is it, then, a fact, that you are 
hardened into a settled insensibility to the things 
which most vitally and profoundly concern you? 
Have you really a power, and that power so com- 
plete that it is effectual almost without an effort, 
and through the inert force of habit, to meet with 
indifference or defiance the aspects of whatever 
is the most sublime, most amiable, or most tre- 
mendous in existence? When mercy, in a ce- 
lestial form approaches to apply to your soul the 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 127 

redeeming principle without which it will perish, 
can you turn it away, coolly saying, Another 
time, perhaps — or perhaps never ? And in re- 
fusing it access, do you feel the satisfaction of a 
person who has promptly and easily dismissed 
an unreasonable applicant, regarding it as an 
arrogant requirer, rather than as a benefactor 
offering you inestimable good? Do you feel, in 
thus being out of the power of religion, a grati- 
fying sense of immunity from one of the evils 
which are infesting mankind ; that there is one 
malady against which your mental constitution 
is fortified, while some of your fellow-mortals, 
attacked by it, are objects almost of your pity? 
And do you account this exemption, and carry 
it upon you through the commerce of life, as a 
privilege of your class, which you as rightfully 
maintain as any other advantage, and with which 
it were little better than impertinence for any one 
to interfere, by representations in favour of that 
from which you thus walk in liberty? If this 
be the established condition of your minds, it is 
what ought to alarm you, like that deadly calm 
which, in some climates, would be an omen to 
you of the subterraneous thunder, and of the 
ground heaving and rending under your feet. 
But, at the same time, it is what may well cause 
a Christian friend to be despondent of the effi- 
cacy of expostulation. 



128 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

He is so, because he is aware that there is 
nothing within your minds adequately, or in any 
tolerable degree, corresponding to the important 
and solemn terms which he must employ. He 
must speak of the soul, redemption, faith, holi- 
ness, conformity to the divine image — of heaven 
and hell, of judgment and eternity. But these 
are insignificant sounds, unless, when pronounc- 
ed, they strike upon conceptions already in the 
mind, which answer to their import — conceptions 
which contain in them, so to speak, the ideal sub- 
stance of what is meant by these signs. And he 
can perceive too well, that this whole order of 
ideas has but a crude, undefined, obscure, and fee- 
ble formation in your understanding. The most 
solemn call of these great words is replied to 
with but a faint and equivocal recognition from 
within. It is as if the names were called of a 
company of persons asleep, who answer without 
the distinctness of consciousness, and some of 
them not at all. Nay, might not men of the 
world be found in such a condition of the intel- 
lect, that these words, addressed to raise the 
corresponding ideas in it, would be nearly like 
calling aloud in a field of the dead, the names 
which are inscribed on their tombs? Change 
the subject, and see the difference. There are 
many terms which have their appropriate ideas 
most perfectly formed in your understanding-— 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 129 

distinct, palpable, and in full dimension. Let 
the denominations be pronounced of divers kinds 
and values of worldly property, of methods and 
rules of transacting business, of the different 
stations in society, with their respective relations 
and circumstances, or of the materials and ac- 
commodations for gratifying the senses ; let some 
of these be named, and instantly the correspond- 
ing ideas arise in the mind, substantial and dis- 
tinct; so that the utterer of the designations 
knows he can do with the auditor whatever de- 
pends simply on his having a right notion of the 
things. But when you hear some of these terms 
expressive of the most important meanings that 
could ever enter into human intelligence, how 
confused, uncouth, and inane, how spiritless and 
powerless, are the forms of thought which glim- 
mer on your apprehension ! It is as if words pro- 
nounced to evoke mighty spirits were answered 
only by the coming of the owls., bats, and insects 
of the twilight. 

The religious monitor is tempted to despond, 
again, because he sees that your devotion to the 
world is established into system, almost into me- 
chanism. A very young person may be frivo- 
lous and thoughtless to the last degree; but he 
is variable: his present impressions may quickly 
give place to new ones; he may abandon one 
favourite pursuit for a different one; and should 

i 



130 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

religion attempt to seize him at an interval of 
these versatile movements, it will indeed have to 
contend with his levity, and the radical aversion 
in his nature to sacred subjects, but not with a 
set of habits grown to a firm consistence, in a 
shape, we might say an organization, adapted to 
keep his whole soul in one steady mode of adhe- 
sion to the world. This latter is a description 
of the condition of many of you, its devotees. 
There is no longer any question whether, or in 
what way you shall be wholly surrendered to it. 
The habitual fact has taken the matter out of 
the province of volition. That you faithfully 
adhere, in spirit, to the world — that you live for 
it, to-day and to-morrow and each ensuing day, 
and wherever you may be, seems as much of 
course as that bodily you walk on its surface. 
And not only are you under this principle of de- 
termination to it as your general object, but you 
have a settled adjustment of feeling and estimate 
to its diversities respectively. You have your 
maxims, associations, and affections, in an or- 
derly state to meet and coalesce with them all 
and each. And your general worldly spirit pre- 
serves a consistency of its special action through- 
out all the detail of its objects; the manner in 
which the predominant law operates with respect 
to each, agreeing with its mode of operation in 
all the others. Thus, you are men of the world 



TO MEK OF THE WORLD. 131 

not only by one general sentiment of devoted- 
ness to it, but in a systematic appropriation of 
that sentiment to various and numberless parti- 
culars. While you cleave to the world generally, 
we may be allowed the figure of saying, that each 
fibre, each nerve, of your moral nature, has its 
own particular point of application to this your 
sovereign good; and all pervaded and kept in 
uniformity of action by the ascendant principle ; 
that principle by which you " serve the creature 
more than the Creator." 

While you are beheld in this firm conjunction 
with the world, by a general attachment, and by 
a distributive application of that attachment, 
like the Indian fig-tree connecting itself vitally, 
at a hundred spots, with the soil over which it 
spreads, it is no wonder that a person desirous 
of warning you not to make light of infinitely 
higher interests, should attempt it with very 
faint hope, or be discouraged from making the 
attempt at all. That which he has to present 
to you will be repelled by a principle which acts 
in a combination of resisting impulses, working 
with uniformity and constancy: some of them 
proceeding, perhaps, from the temper of mind 
acquired in commercial pursuits ; some of them 
from the habits of feeling which have grown 
from " friendship with the world," from content- 
ed and preferred association with men devoid of 



132 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

religion ; some of them from the disposition pro- 
duced by the study and strife to make your way 
upward in society; some of them from the prac- 
tice of relieving the cares of business only by the 
indulgences of pleasure ; and some of them, per- 
haps, from a taste for appearing as men of fash- 
ion. All this is a systematic fortification against 
the access of religion, to instruct, persuade, or 
remonstrate. And the fatal completion of the 
evil may be, that you are insensible of any 
great evil or danger in all this. For you have 
fully adopted the world's standard of character, 
according to which you may be, all this while, 
what are called honourable men. You may 
even come to take credit for considerable liber- 
ality of opinion in allowing, that it is right 
enough there should be in the world a class of 
earnest devoted religionists, as well as other va- 
rieties of character ; that they do very right to 
follow up their own convictions; their only 
offence being the fanaticism of insisting, that all 
ought to be such — that 'you ought to be such ; 
whereas yours, you say, is a character much 
better adapted to the world we are to live in 
than theirs. 

So you are, on the whole, in high favour with 
yourselves. You may not indeed be entirely 
secure against occasional disturbances to your 
self-satisfaction ; there may be moments when 



TO MEN" OF THE WORLD. 133 

a suspicion arises from the dark depth within, 
that all is not right ; when conscience, generally 
still, gives some intimations, like the sighs of a 
person beginning to recover from suspended ani- 
mation ; when some glimpses of a greater eco- 
nomy are admitted through narrow rents and 
openings in the little system within which you 
are immured. But you suffer no habitual an- 
noyance of an impression that you must alter 
your plan. This, your general satisfaction with 
the part you are acting, depresses the spirit of 
the pleader for religion. He wants to persuade 
you to reflect ; but how and when can he bring 
an adequate force of such persuasion to act on 
such a state of the mind. You are so possessed, 
he says, with your own good opinion, that any 
serious examination, whether it be not a delu- 
sive one, will appear to you a superfluous trou- 
ble, and the exhortation to it officious and imper- 
tinent. 

But will you absolutely refuse such an exer- 
cise of your reason? How can you have lived 
so long without feeling that so much, at least, is 
what a rational accountable being ought to do ? 
Do it now ! What should prevent you ? You 
have in that spirit the power to think at this 
very time. You can fix it intently on the sub- 
ject that you shall choose. Now is an interval 
which can be exempted from the indispensable 



134 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

demands of business, and, if you will it so, from 
the allurements to dissipation. You may, you 
can, this hour, recollect whether there be a sub- 
ject of transcendent importance, which you have 
never duly considered yet ; and you may choose 
it, instead of another subject, for present consi- 
deration. You cannot help seeing what that 
subject is. It is Religion that stands before you, 
with oracles, lights, and an exhibition of the 
most grand and awful images. It is that which 
represents to you, the real truth of the state of 
your soul toward God, the concern of your eter- 
eternal interests, the relation you stand in to 
another world, the peremptory requirement of 
what you must do to be saved. What can ever, 
through endless duration, be worth your consi- 
dering, if this be not ? You know that religion, 
unless it be a fable, has all this importance ; that 
it has this importance to you, and that it has it 
to you now, while this day, this hour, is passing. 
In a matter of incomparably less magnitude, 
(say it were a most critical hazard, threatening 
you at the point where your temporal prosperity 
mainly depended, and might be ruined for life,) 
you would feel that the concern pressed impor- 
tunately and justly on the thoughts and cares of 
the present instant. If any one advised you to 
take no trouble of vigilance or exertion about it, 
to occupy yourself entirely with other matters, 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 135 

and indifferently await the event, you would 
spurn the suggestion as equally unfeeling and 
absurd. — What! you would say, when the whole 
question of safety or utter ruin may be depend- 
ing on the judgment and activity which I may 
exercise this day ? But here is the supreme in- 
terest of your existence. It cannot be safe — 
you will confess it cannot — if you will give it no 
serious attention. But then you are confessing 
that you have left it till now in peril, and that it 
is so at this very hour — nay, in greater peril than 
ever before, as aggravated by the guilt of such 
wilful neglect, and by the diminution of the term 
allotted for the attainment of a happy security. 
And can you repel from you, can you resolutely 
set yourself to force off its urgent application for 
your immediate attention ? Look at the action 
of your mind. Is it really, even now, in the very 
effort of an impulse to drive this subject away, 
and are you giving your whole will to make this 
impulse successful ? And do you feel that you 
are prevailing ? And is it impossible for you to 
reflect, at this moment, what it is that you are 
successfully doing ? Cannot you perceive, have 
you no suspicion, what dreadful principle it is 
that is giving you this power and this success ? 
Can you let it perform such a work, and not re- 
solve to inspect its nature ? Look at it, observe 
its fatal operation just now going on ; and then 



136 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

say honestly, whether any thing can be of a 
quality more execrable ? Do not say this is ex- 
travagant language ; do not stay to mind the 
language at all ; but fix your attention on the 
thing itself. Words are wind ; but there is a 
reality there in operation, at this moment, in 
your mind. It is actually there, — the fearful 
principle, which is actuating your feelings and 
your will to force away from your spirit the 
thoughts, and all the benefit of thinking, of your 
highest duty and interest, of your eternal salva- 
tion. If it could be suddenly revealed to you in 
full light, what an operation this is which you 
are even now suffering there in your heart, no 
awful catastrophe in nature, no tempest nor 
shock of an earthquake, would affright you so 
much. 

After an interval, we would ask you, And is 
it now done ? Has the repelling principle, after 
so many former successes, prevailed once now ; 
so that the great subject which approached you y 
appealed to you, solicited you, displayed smiles 
of divine benignity, alternating with just me- 
naces and frowns on your obstinacy, has been 
driven off, and is vanishing like the images of a 
disturbing dream when one awakes ? Are you 
now quite at your ease again, to go free into your 
business, conviviality, or amusements ? Then, 
what have you accomplished — but to send an 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 137 

angel of mercy away, and to vanquish any last 
power that remained in an almost expiring con- 
science ? What have you gained but to have 
your soul still more securely grasped by that 
which withholds it from God, and a confirmed 
power and facility of rejecting that which speaks 
in his name, if it should obtrude on you again ? 
In what new principle do you walk forth, but 
that of having less remaining time and augment- 
ed disinclination for that one thing of which the 
failure is perdition ? 

Such a view of the disposition of your minds, 
and of the manner in which you submit and be- 
tray them to be acted upon, chills the animation 
of a person who would plead with you to apply 
them to religion. But still we would hope bet- 
ter things, and that it may yet not be in vain to 
conjure you to reflect on this great subject as 
involving your welfare. Tell us whether it be 
utterly an idle hope, which a more perfect know- 
ledge of you would show it foolish to entertain, 
that you may be induced to employ, in the ex- 
ercise of such reflection, this day and hour to 
better purpose than any former one of your life. 
Why should not this be the day of a determin- 
ed seriousness of thought ? Think enough, at 
least, to give a reason why it should not ; and 
think, whether it would not be worse than a 
shame, to refuse such an employment without a 



138 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

reason. And if the only reason be, that you 
are reluctant, consider whether that reason, that 
reluctance, will ever spontaneously cease. But 
consider, too, whether that reluctance be not it- 
self, in truth, a mighty reason on the opposite 
side, as implying, in the conscious discordancy 
between your spirit and the subject, a disorder 
so formidable, that madness alone would be con- 
tent to leave it unexamined and unreformed. 
"Would that a superhuman power might stand in 
your way just here, stop you at this point in 
your course, and constrain you to reflect now ! 
The hours, the day which you are just now en- 
tering on, are as yet vacant, but will soon be 
filled and gone. They are coming as a space of 
time which might be, may be, filled with a men- 
tal exercise of immense value. Here is a sub- 
ject claiming to occupy them as they come on. 
If admitted to do so, it will indeed inflict re- 
morse for your having sent away into the past, 
a long succession of the portions of your time 
charged with no such precious contents — thus 
avenging itself on you for your prolonged rejec- 
tion. But will that be an indication that you 
would have done well to reject it still, and excite 
your grief that it has for once effectually arrest- 
ed you? Would you, under this arrest, struggle 
as to escape from an enemy, when the subject 
will bring with it the evidence and the convic- 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 139 

tion, that, though with an austere and accusa- 
tory aspect, it is certainly come as a friend? 
Admit it into your mind and time this once, 
with all its solemnities, and even its reproaches. 
And if, as a condition of doing so, you will in- 
sist on retaining some precautionary resource 
against being absolutely and irrecoverably sur- 
rendered to it, you may be assured, (if you can 
accept so melancholy a fact for consolation,) 
that, in the strength of your corrupt nature, you 
will not easily lose all power of reaction for de- 
barring its entrance, when, at another time, it 
shall present itself to you again. 

There possibly are special circumstances of 
the present time, of a nature to enforce this ex- 
hortation. It may be, that one of you, worship- 
pers of the world, has just experienced an ill 
reward of his faithful devotion. Some grievous 
disappointment, perhaps, some failure of a pro- 
ject, some fall of your fortunes, some blast on 
your hopes, has reduced you to a temporary dis- 
gust with what you have so unreservedly loved. 
Just now the world stands before you with faded 
attractions, and you feel as if you could forswear 
your dedication and attachment to it. Row, 
though this be a turn of feeling not the purest 
in principle, it might be made beneficial in effect. 
Instead of allowing your spirit to remain stag- 
nant in a sullen and resentful mortification, 



140 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

waiting till the world, which, however cruelly it 
may sport with its votaries, does not easily let 
any of them go, shall again assume an aspect of 
blandishment, and renew its promises, how wise 
would it be to take advantage of this reflux of 
your affections, to turn your thoughts toward 
religion, and see and try whether there may not 
be something better for you there ! It would be 
a worthy revenge on a world that has disappoint- 
ed, cheated, and wronged you, to avail yourself 
of the recoil of your heart from it, in reinforce- 
ment of the conviction, that it is time to " seek 
a better country:" thus turning it into an im- 
pulse to a new-formed aim at " the prize of the 
high calling." But at any rate, and at the least, 
do not let this disturbance of your friendship 
with the world be lost, as a circumstance to co- 
incide with the remonstrance which would awa- 
ken you to serious reflection. Do not. at once, 
fall out with the world, and disregard or resent 
that which would tell you how just is your quar- 
rel, how long since it ought to have taken place, 
and how incomparably better you may do than 
make up the breach. 

Perhaps some of you have just witnessed, with 
indignant vexation, one of the iniquitous partial- 
ities of fortune, as you call it. A man whom 
you know to be of worthless or detestable cha- 
racter, has obtained, through apparent casualty, 



TO MEN OE THE WORLD. 141 

or by means of craft, or corrupt interest, or even 
by the most undisguised violation of right, some 
remarkable advantage of enrichment or prece- 
dence ; such a thing as you had coveted, but had 
not presumed to hope for ; or possibly, as you had 
hoped and indefatigably laboured for, many 
years, but never could grasp the prize. And in 
the pride of this acquisition, he insulted the more 
deserving men, at the cost of whose disappoint- 
ment and injury he had made it. You exclaim- 
ed, What a world this is, where the good things 
go to the worst men, and merit may pine and 
die ! But is this the identical world to which 
you, nevertheless, are so infatuated, that you will 
not so much as think of another ? What ? are 
you resolved that a glaring manifestation to you 
of the quality of the object you have idolized 
shall rather serve to any effect, even that of cor- 
roding your heart to no avail, than to that of 
lending force to the persuasions of religion ; of 
. religion, which has uniformly testified to you 
that your object is — what you are now practi- 
cally finding it ? Would you rather be retained, 
resentful but still servile, for this tyrant to exhi- 
bit you in scorn as a slave, fretting indeed, but 
impotent, even in will, to revolt, than adopt the 
hero's language, exalted into a Christian sense 
and spirit, " Then, thus I turn my back- — there 
is a world elsewhere" ? 



142 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

It may be, again, that one of you has lately 
seen a rival and coeval worshipper of the world 
leave it. Perhaps the manner of his departing 
answered to the description — " driven away." 
You observed the long lingering look cast after 
all that was receding, and the fearful glance to- 
ward what was approaching. You saw what was 
the result of that choice which had been made by 
you both, and to which he had remained constant 
nearly to the moment when an irresistible power 
interposed to send him off. You have the images 
of this sad spectacle fresh now in your mind; 
and those images — are they atheists there? 

Or you may have beheld a less tragical exem- 
plification of what the world will do for its friends, 
in the case of one whom you had long known as 
a believer in its promises, a zealot to its princi- 
les and a staunch pursuer of its objects; but who, 
in the closing scene, relented into shame and pe- 
nitential sorrow, faintly mingled with hope in the 
divine mercy which he implored. He declared 
to you his overwhelming conviction of the folly 
of his course and yours; and entreated you no 
longer to leave your whole soul immersed in that 
which must, in such an hour, break away from 
around you, and abandon you to a desolation like 
his. Now recollect — at the time of receiving 
such an admonition, did you really think there 
was nothing rational in it? While, for decorum's 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 143 

sake at least, you put on a grave and assenting 
manner, did you, nevertheless, coolly say within 
yourself, or was there a consciousness equivalent 
to saying — I need not take any further thought 
of this ? I do not wonder that this person, in 
such circumstances, should talk so ; but what he 
says or feels has no appropriateness in its appli- 
cation to me. I must not let any such gloomy 
ideas take possession of my mind; no, not even 
though it be possible enough, I may ultimately 
come into a situation in which I shall think and 
feel in the same manner. 

We may confidently assume, that you did not, 
on the spot, maintain such composure, and pledge 
yourself to these conclusions. A certain indis- 
tinct dismay, at the least, invaded you, to the 
effect of subduing you, with some general kind 
of conviction, to the formation of some general 
kind of purpose. Or, possibly, the impression 
was exceedingly powerful, the conviction a dis- 
tinct act of judgment, and the resolution very de- 
terminate. And what then? Have you since 
deliberately judged all this to have been a vain 
agitation of your spirit, a brief delirium, occa- 
sioned by a sympathetic affection from the sight 
of sickness, distress, and death? If not, have 
the intervention of a certain number of hours 
and days, a short succession of risings and set- 
tings of the sun, and the return of the accus- 



144 COKSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

tomed thoughts and employments, essentially 
altered the merits of the case? Have these 
caused what was truth and obligation and dan- 
ger, to be such no longer? Has the mere pass- 
ing of time reduced importance to inanity? Or 
has it detached from you, and brought to appear 
as no longer your own, that grand interest which 
can have no reality but as a personal one, but as 
your own? — just as if you were to consider the 
things affecting your natural life, (for instance, 
your state of health or disease, your exposure to 
a peril, or security against it,) as something ex- 
isting in the abstract— a reality, indeed, but 
something quite separable from yourself. The 
circumstance, too, that by the passing of the in- 
tervening time, you are carried a little nearer to 
the final result of your plan of life, — has this 
actually lessened the importance which you saw 
in such magnitude by that solemn light which 
flashed upon you in the gloomy chamber where 
a rival lover of the world was penitentially pre- 
paring to leave it ? Think of a rational be- 
ing so easily passing free from the hold of the 
strongest forms of admonition ; and spending his 
time to the very purpose, in effect, of reducing 
his apprehension of the awful magnificence of 
eternity, progressively to a more and more dimi- 
nutive impression against the moment when he 
is to plunge into it! 



TO MEtf OF THE WORLD. 145 

Should no circumstances nearly resembling 
these have occurred within your recent experi- 
ence, it would be a rather unusual lot if you have 
not met with some incident, some turn of events, 
some aspect of life or death, adapted to enforce 
serious reflection. Look a little way back in 
memory, and see if no image will arise to remind 
you, that then and there, by such an event, such 
a spectacle, such a voice, you were specially ad- 
monished to consider your course. And an- 
swer it to yourself, what effect that appeal to 
your conscience ought to have had. But do not 
narrowly limit such a review, as if afraid to re- 
turn to those spots in past time, where the hand 
of a dreaded power touched you as you passed, 
where truth spoke to you in severe accents, or 
a more gentle, persuasive voice entreated you not 
to go thoughtlessly on. If you be afraid to go 
back thither, what is it that this apprehension 
tells you ? Do not limit the retrospect, as if you 
had no concern with the occasions and causes 
that once, long since, challenged your considera- 
tion to the most important subject. Do not 
yield to the deluded feeling, that all those, being 
gone so far away, have perished from all connec- 
tion with you; like the portion of air which you 
then breathed, or the grass or flowers on which 
you happened to tread. For be assured, they 
inseparably belong to your present and ultimate 



146 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

responsibility. They are all coming after you, 
however silently and unthought-of, and will be 
with you in the great account. And if you 
could be induced to make an effort, in any 
thoughtful hour, to imagine with what a vivid- 
ness of recognition and intensity of reproach, the 
monitory occurrences of your past life will at 
last present themselves to strike upon your con- 
science, if they shall have been disregarded in 
their time, and suffered to go useless into obliv- 
ion as you have proceeded on, it might have the 
effect of recalling them now, to combine in op- 
eration with all the other things which summon 
you to reflection. 

When a religious observer sometimes has his 
thoughts directed upon you, he is struck with 
the idea, what a mighty assemblage of considera- 
tions, that should irresistibly compel you to 
thoughtfulness, you are insensible of. As, 
when we extend our contemplations conjectu- 
rally into the economy of existence which sur- 
rounds us, it is suggested to thought, what un- 
embodied intelligences, what communications, 
what agencies, what elements perhaps, what pro- 
cesses, there are on all sides, and many of them 
relating to us, but of which the senses admit no 
perception; so in the spiritual economy, that is, 
the system of relations in which the immortal 
mind stands involved, there are realities, there 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 147 

are truths, of highest import, there are argu- 
ments, warning circumstances, alternatives of 
good and evil, most vitally relating to your wel- 
fare but non-existent to your apprehension. The 
very emanations of heaven, radiating downward 
to where you dwell, are intercepted, and do not 
touch you. It is the frequent reflection of a 
thoughtful mind, in observing you — what ideas, 
what truths, what mighty appeals, belong to the 
condition of this one man: and of that devoted 
and enslaved to the world — Oh, why is it impos- 
sible to bring them into application! A few 
words are sufficient to express such things, as if 
they were to fall with their proper weight, and 
no more, on their spirits, enclosed as it were in 
the consolidated habits of the world, mixed and 
hardened in its clay, would excite a commotion 
through their whole insensate being, and alarm 
them to a sense of a new world of thoughts and 
interests. A few minutes of time would be 
enough for the enunciation of what, if it could 
be received by them in its simple, unexaggerated 
importance, would stop that one man's gay car- 
eer, as if a great serpent had raised its head in 
his path; would confound that other's calcula- 
tion for emolument; would bring a sudden dark 
eclipse on that third man's visions of fame ; would 
tear them all from their inveterate and almost 
desperate combination with what is to perish, 



148 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

and, amidst their surprise and terror, would ex- 
cite an emotion of joy that they had been dis- 
severed, before it was too late, from an object 
that was carrying them down a rapid declina- 
tion toward destruction. — And the chief of these 
things, so potent if applied, are not withheld as 
if secreted and silent in some dark cloud, from 
which we had to invoke them to break forth in 
lightning; they are actually exhibited in the 
divine revelation. 

This, so strange a condition, — that there are 
mighty truths, requisitions, overtures, promises, 
portents, and menaces, as it were close to you, 
suspended just over you, of a nature to demolish 
the present state of your mind if brought in 
contact with it, and that, nevertheless, it re- 
mains undisturbed, — is sometimes a matter 
of gloomy, indignant, and almost misanthropic 
speculation. But in the season of better feel- 
ing, the religious beholder is excited to a be- 
nevolent impatience, a restless wish, that things 
so near and important to you should take hold 
upon you. Why cannot, he says, that which 
comes between and renders those things, in- 
trinsically of such awful force, actually power- 
less, be destroyed or removed? If there be a 
principle of repulsion, if there be a veil, if there 
be a shield invisibly held by a demon's hand, let 
it be annihilated, that the appropriate truth may 
rush in with all its power. Let the thought of 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 149 

the Almighty fulminate on the mind of that mor- 
tal, who is living "without God in the world." 
Let the idea of eternity overwhelm that spirit, 
whose whole scheme of existence embraces but 
a diminutive portion of time. Let the worth 
and danger of the soul be instantly revealed to 
that person, whose chief cares are engrossed with 
the accommodation or adornment of the body. 
Let the value of treasures in another world be 
brought into sudden contrast with earthly wealth, 
in the view of that worshipper of mammon. 
Let the scene of the last judgment present itself 
in a glare, to him whose conscience is in repose 
on the delusive principles of the world's morality 
and religion. Let an austere apparition, as from 
the dead, accost him who is living as if life were 
never to have an end. To him who is indiffer- 
ent to the whole concern of salvation, let there 
be an affecting display of what an extraordinary 
appointment, of mingled justice and mercy, was 
required to render it possible; and of what it 
cost the saviour of the world. Let these things 
strike into the souls of men of the world, and 
they would awake in amazement at their pre- 
vious condition, and continue long in sorrow for 
its criminality and absurdity. And are these 
still to be exactly the things for which they have 
no sensibility or perception? And is it in the 
immediate presence of these objects, constantly 



150 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

pressing for their attention, but unacknowledged 
and unseen, that they are to occupy themselves 
with every business, or entertain every trifle and 
vanity, satisfied that nothing is greatly wrong, 
assured that all is safe, or not even caring so 
much as to think whether they be safe or not? 

But, men of the world, it is possible you may 
be provoked to assume the defensive, and deny 
the justice of so strong a charge of irrationality 
and guilt as we make, in applying to you this 
denomination with these comments. But it is 
not safe for you to do this with a thoughtless 
confidence, without an exercise of reflection to 
ascertain the real state of your mind and char- 
acter. Be persuaded to make an effort to take 
a true account of that state, as a simple matter 
of fact. Of what, in all the world should you be 
concerned to know the truth, if not of that inter- 
nal condition which is forming your destiny for 
hereafter? 

Now, then, is it not true, is it not a fact, that 
almost the whole system of the feelings and ac- 
tivity of your mind is limited exclusively to this 
world, so as to be practically much the same as 
if you were unaware that your being has an am- 
pler sphere of interests ? Observe what is the 
extent of the range which your spirit takes. 
Question it how far it goes forth, habitually, or 
at any time. See and acknowledge to yourself, 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 151 

what it is that is in sole possession of you, as if 
you were made for nothing more. 

Take a view of your thoughts. They are in 
number incalculable, and they can go in all di- 
rections, to a boundless extent; they might "wan- 
der through eternity." Whither do they go, the 
countless thousands of them, and on what do 
they fix ? You may perceive that nearly all of 
them stop within the circle of this world's con- 
cerns. They start and move and traverse in- 
cessantly, but still within this contracted scope; 
seeming to know of nothing that is revealed, or 
important, or possible to you beyond it. How 
many of them ever go, in the impulse of faith, 
into the spiritual region, or bring you intima- 
tions of having seen into a superior world? But 
there is no need of thus adding question to 
question: you plainly know, that the contin- 
ual activity of your thoughts is centred upon 
an order of temporal interests ; that there, and 
there almost exclusively, they are busy and never 
tired, morning and evening and throughout all 
your times and seasons. 

Observe, also, your affections and passions, 
those feelings of the heart which often accom- 
pany the acts of thought. See what it is that 
most certainly awakes them at the slightest call; 
that attracts, attaches, and absorbs them. Sup- 
pose that, at very many times, fallen upon in- 



152 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

differently and without any selection of occa- 
sions, the question were to be suddenly put and 
ingenuously answered from consciousness at the 
instant, What is, just now, the most an object 
of complacency, desire, or solicitude ? how often 
do you think it would happen, in a thousand 
repetitions of the question, that the answer would 
name any object of higher order than this world's 
affairs ? Would it be twenty times ! would it 
be ten ? 

And your schemes of active pursuit — what is 
that which would be their success? Is there 
one of them, or any part of one of them, of 
which no possible turn of worldly events would 
be the disappointment ? Would any thing, that 
should be the most disastrous to your spiritual 
welfare, be a frustration of any one of those 
schemes ? 

We say, is it not true, that this is your state 
of mind ? But, then, reflect, that you practically 
disown the grand relations of your nature. You 
endeavour not to belong, if we may express it 
so, to a spiritual world, but to the merely ma- 
terial and animal order of existence. In plainer 
terms, you acknowledge no good in being spirits, 
but to serve the earthly purposes of this short 
life. You do what you can to withdraw, by a 
resolute subsidence and degradation, from that 
economy which holds the spirits sojourning on 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 153 

earth connected with every thing higher in ex- 
istence. From the system constituted, (as a 
part of that economy,) for renovating, training, 
and finally exalting them, you practically make 
yourselves aliens and outcasts, rejecting its be- 
nefits, and wishing you could be forgotten in its 
jurisdiction. You are content that any other 
fallen beings, rather than you, should be inclu- 
ded in the dispensation of mercy through a Me- 
diator. And, to complete this abdication of your 
most solemn relations, you assume to be only in 
some very relaxed and undefined manner, sub- 
jects of responsibility and retribution. All this, 
in effect, you are doing, in devoting yourselves, 
with soul and life, exclusively to the interests of 
this world. For what less can you be doing, 
while you refuse all practical acknowledgment 
of these grand relations, maintain a state of 
mind unconformed to them, employ no cares or 
affections upon them, and will not allow even 
your thoughts to be directed to them ? But is 
it not an enormous and fearful absurdity, that 
while thus you are actually involved in relations 
which no power but that which could annihilate 
your being can dissolve, with a grand system, 
comprehending whatever belongs to the existence 
and interests of spirits, comprehending a method 
of redemption through a Mediator, an invisible 
state, heaven, hell, and eternity, you should form 



154 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

your life on a plan, as if this relative condition 
of your spirit were abolished, or were nothing 
but a fantastic theory, and contract all the in- 
terests of your spiritual and immortal being to 
a span of time and earth ? Think what the 
predicament will be, when these disowned but 
indissoluble relations shall vindictively verify 
their reality and authority, and wrest you away 
from that object to which you have reduced and 
confined yourself, so as to be almost growing in- 
to one substance with it. 

Again, is it not true, that, in this devotedness 
to the world, you are living estranged from God ? 
Though this was implied in the preceding repre- 
sentation, you would do well to make it a dis- 
tinct matter to be brought to the proof. Try 
it by any mode of questioning that would the 
most prominently expose the truth. For ex- 
ample : suppose that such a thing were at any 
time to take place, as that you should feel a 
mighty impression of the divine presence, a con- 
sciousness of being pervaded, in your every fa- 
culty, quality, and thought, by the sunbeams, as 
it were, of his irresistible intelligence, an affect- 
ing sense of your entire dependence, a horror 
for having sinned against him, an ardent aspira- 
tion to enjoy his eternal favour, and a determi- 
nation with the utmost impulse of your affections 
and will, to serve him thenceforward, — say, 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 155 

whether this would not be the most amazing 
phenomenon that had ever happened to you ? 
Would you not wonder, beyond all power of ex- 
pression, what new moral element could have 
been shed around you, for your spirit to see and 
breathe in ? But then the fact must be, that 
the present state of your mind is the reverse of 
all this ; that the Almighty G od, your creator, 
preserver, and governor, the supreme benefactor, 
and the sole possible giver of ultimate felicity, 
has hitherto been in your regard a comparatively 
insignificant object. The universe of his works, 
the revelations of his word, the directing inter- 
ference of his dominion, the wonders and mys- 
teries involved within your own existence, have 
but feebly and seldom brought the apprehension 
of him to your minds. The good which you 
have enjoyed, and which could not have come 
to you but through an inconceivably multifari- 
ous agency of an intelligent Power, you have 
received as if resulting from some mechanism of 
nature, or imparted by the pagan unthinking 
soul of the world ; but indeed, without reflect- 
ing on it so much as to acknowledge even that 
for its source. The schemes which have been 
the chief business and interest of your life, were 
formed with no express consideration whether 
God would approve them, and prosecuted in ut- 
ter forgetfulness of dependence on him for aid 



156 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

and success. If the thought had spontaneously 
arisen, What is God to me, in sensible impor- 
tance ? the reply might have been, Nothing ; or 
less, at most, than that person, my friend, or 
that other, my foe; than that ability of my coad- 
jutors, that application of art, that machinery, 
that sum of emolument. As to piety aspiring 
so high as the experience of communion with 
God, and the influential operation of his Spirit, 
if such ideas, conveyed in such terms, inciden- 
tally met your notice, they appeared either un- 
intelligible or fanatical. Eecollect and question 
the habitual temper of your mind, whether it 
has not been an unwelcome thing to be reminded 
of God at all. If it might have been conceded 
to you, that you should obtain what would please 
you most, with respect to a lasting condition of 
your existence, would not the wish have been 
something like this — that God, contenting him- 
self with carrying on the general system of the 
world, only rendered a little more commodious, 
would allow you to live in it indefinitely onward 
— and let you alone f 

Now, if there should be an interval when you 
are inclined (for some of you profess to be capa- 
ble of abstracted mental employments) to in- 
dulge your imagination in contemplating awful 
and portentous spectacles, in ideal or actual ex- 
istence, you need not range in quest of such in- 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 157 

to the visionary world. Nor need you go to 
far-off tracts of the creation, seeking what mighty 
forms of evil may there have their abode. The 
guardians of the fearful secrets of any dark coast 
might justly remand you back, to behold here, in 
your own place, a visitation of the most direful 
prodigy which can have blasted any region with 
its presence. For here, in the condition of your 
spirits, the sovereign and most sacred principle 
of order in the creation is abjured and extermi- 
nated. To be most intimately in the presence, 
to be surrounded continually by the glory, of a 
Being omnipotent and infinitely intelligent, ex- 
istent from eternity to eternity, the originator, 
supporter, and disposer of all other existence ; 
and to feel no powerful impression on your mind, 
no reverential fear, no frequent intimations even 
of the very fact, — is not this an astonishing vi- 
olation of all rectitude, a most melancholy dere- 
liction of all reason? This is to have your 
best faculties shrunk and stupified to a strange 
conformity with brutal nature, without its inno- 
cence and impunity. This is in effect to tell 
that Being, that his infinite supremacy is a vain 
circumstance in this province of his dominion ; 
that his is an unnecessary and undesirable pre- 
sence, tolerable only while leaving you unre- 
minded of it, or consenting to be regarded with 
indifference. It is as if, with an inversion of 



158 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

piety, you would thank him only for being in- 
visible and silent, and pray only that he would 
be more entirely and be always so. You tell 
him, that the most inconsiderable of the things 
he has made, or even the things which men have 
made, are of more importance in your view than 
all the magnificence of his glory. Under the 
heaven and effulgence of that glory, you deliber- 
ately involve your spirits, as it were, within little 
opake spheres of matter, pleased to be secluded 
from the light of the universe. 

How can we help it, if you will regard this as 
a mere rhetorical and perhaps pompous display 
of an evil really of no formidable magnitude, and 
coolly pass it by with the remark, that we might 
as well employ sober language ? We will only 
say, beware that, in calling for sober language, 
you do not mean a language conveying a faint 
and unawakening expression of the truth. Be- 
ware, also, that you do not, on such a subject, 
mistake for soberness any thing less than deep 
and most serious thought. And if you will but 
have the conscience to exercise such thought, it 
may be left to your own judgment to estimate 
the evil involved in the undenied fact, that, being 
continually and inevitably in the presence and 
power of the Almighty, you yet are careless of 
this infinitely the most important circumstance 
of your situation. The character of that fact 



TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 159 

would be exposed to you in alarming manifesta- 
tion, if your reflection should cast a faithful 
light upon it in the instances in which you may 
have the evidence that it is a fact. Fix your 
attention on some of those circumstances which 
will prove to you that you are " without God in 
the world," and honestly endeavour to see in 
those exemplifications, whether it be possible to 
overrate the irrationality, the guilt, and the dan- 
ger. Thus, for instance, when you feel yourself 
vigilantly, and even intensely solicitous about 
your reputation among your fellow-mortals, as if 
the essence of your happiness depended on their 
opinion of you, and are gratified or wounded as 
that opinion honours or depreciates you, reflect, 
that you feel no such concern, and perhaps never 
have felt a thousandth part of the measure of con- 
cern, how you stand in the account of the Go- 
vernor and Judge of the world ; and then dwell 
on this fact with judicial consideration, and an- 
swer to yourself whether there be not a profound 
depravity in such a state of mind. When you 
have been spending many hours in society, with 
a lively interchange of sentiments, with your at- 
tention directed to various persons, and with a 
variously modified interest in being in their com- 
pany, reflect, (for may not this be often the 
truth ?) that you hardly once, all the while, re- 
collected the presence of the greatest Being in 



160 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

the universe ; and then soberly consider what a 
grossness of spirit is proved by such an oblivion. 
A show of human countenances and figures, a 
circulation of ordinary converse, with some in- 
termingling excitement of vanity and competi- 
tion, were enough to preclude, during the race 
of so many thousands of your moments, all re- 
cognition of Him, who was then preserving your 
life, inspecting your heart, witnessing your pro- 
cedure ; and who was adored by whatever no- 
bler spirits might have their offices to perform 
in this part of the terrestrial scene. Think of 
this, and confess that such a complete and pro- 
longed absence of the recollection betrays a con- 
dition of mind most refractory to the training 
for that other society, where his presence is con- 
tinually felt as the one most impressive fact, and 
most animating cause of delight. 

It may be allowed to descend to still more 
special illustrations. We may suppose one of 
you to direct his look or his walk over a piece 
of ground, in which he has the rights of a pro- 
prietor — till his successor shall take them. He 
might reflect, that this space of earth has more 
occupied his thoughts and affections, has been 
beyond comparison a more interesting reality to 
him, than the Author and Sustainer of the whole 
creation. Then let him look again on the soil, 
exert one solemn act of thought toward Him by 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 1C1 

whom and in whom all things exist, and judge 
whether this be not a horrid impiety. Another 
of you has gazed upon, and leaned over, the ma- 
terial which represents wealth, and confers the 
power of it ; he has stood by his god, delighted 
and absorbed, without thought or care respect- 
ing any other, in earth or heaven. It should 
be possible, when he shall find himself in this 
situation again, to constrain himself to one effort 
of serious reflection ; and when he has done so, 
let him tell whether he did not seem to hear a 
voice say, " Thy money perish with thee." Some 
of you may be men of a more refined taste, and 
may have drawn into your possession a rich 
collection of the works of genius, in literature 
and art. Let them confess to themselves whe- 
ther they have not contemplated the splendid 
and growing accumulation with a delight, a care, 
and a pride of incomparably stronger prevalence 
in the mind, than any sentiment regarding the 
Divinity. To be thus environed with the pro- 
ductions (even though they little, in truth, con- 
sulted them,) of the most vigorous and cultivated 
minds of many regions and ages, constituted 
perhaps a kind of heathen elysium, in which 
they were insensible of any necessity of converse 
with the perfect Intelligence, the Source of all 
mental light, of all beauty and grandeur. But 
shall their dwelling amidst the collected results 

L 



162 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

of thinking, be itself a cause to disable them for 
reflection? If not, let them consider what is 
the true quality of that passion by which they 
are rendering this abode the scene of a voluntary 
exile from " the Father of lights," raising as it 
were a wall, constructed of the works and mon- 
uments of human intellect, to shut themselves 
up from his communications. And let them re- 
flect how melancholy it must be, to go away 
from amidst the pomp of literary treasures, poor, 
(and the more so for the very passion for possess- 
ing them, and the idolatry of them as possessed,) 
in all the attainments and dispositions prepara- 
tory to an entrance on that scene where no truth, 
no intellectual glory, no ideas or realities of 
sublimity or beauty, can be apprehended sepa- 
rately from their Divine Original. Let the gra- 
tified possessor look again at the imposing array 
of the vehicles of all that has been the most 
powerful, admirable, and enchanting in human 
thought and fancy, but with a reflection with 
which he may never before have surveyed the 
spectacle. Here is the intellectual world con- 
centrated, as it were, and embodied before me. 
It is but a small portion of it which the brevity 
of life, with its many employments and griev- 
ances will permit to be of any avail to me for a 
valuable use; but I find there is a principle ope- 
rating, which can turn the whole collectively to 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 163 

a pernicious effect. For the more I delight my- 
self in being surrounded with this affluence of 
the productions of mind, the less am I disposed 
to communication with Him whose living influ- 
ences on my spirit can alone make me wise and 
happy. But can I be content to think, that I 
shall, after a little while, retire from this proud 
temple to the honour of human intellect, actu- 
ally doomed to take with me an unfitness ac- 
quired in it for the life of intelligence and felicity 
in the immediate presence of God ? 

Again, some of you might be addressed as 
persons raised high above the level of the com- 
munity, in wealth, rank, or power, or all these 
together. You, of this order, sometimes look 
down to see how far the multitude are be- 
low. And proud, indeed, would your position 
be, if, in looking down from your eminence, you 
did not descry certain things which, if we may 
express it so, dare to look up, and dare, though 
the multitude do not, to ascend. Against such 
things as vexation, pain, sickness, old age, and 
death, your lofty station is not embattled ; and 
their commission to ravage the plain below con- 
tains no restriction that they respect your ele- 
vated ground. Still, notwithstanding, you are 
highly pleased with the situation which exhibits 
you in such splendour, affords such variety of 
gratifications, and gives so commanding an as- 



164 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

cendancy over inferior mankind. You indulge 
sometimes in the luxury of verifying to your- 
selves, by an act of reflection, what a fortunate 
lot it is that you possess : and the images you 
raise to augment this luxury, by contrast with 
what you can the most forcibly represent to 
yourselves as infelicity, are those of a condition 
in life insignificant, obscure, and indigent. This 
proud complacency would perhaps be heightened, 
if you could have a disclosure fully made to you 
of the mortification and envy felt, by many tens 
of thousands, in comparing their situation with 
yours. Indeed you sometimes do, some of you, 
gratify yourselves by imagining this. But, 
amidst all the satisfaction or exultation, have 
you no perception of a shade stealing over the 
tract of brightness where you are walking in 
pride ; an ominous gloom, charged with deep 
meaning, " instinct itself with spirit," and giving 
intimation of a Being who knows no envy or 
admiration, and is no "respecter of persons" ? 
True, there is very much in your situation to 
prevent all such perceptions. It is striking to 
consider, what resources it affords for escaping 
or expelling the invasion of all serious thought 
that should make any reference to heaven. The 
means you possess for change of place, and every 
other stimulant variety ; the pomp and show of 
life ; the routine of ceremony; the amusements 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 165 

offering in rapid and endless succession ; the 
epicurean gratifications ; and, in the case of 
some of you, the extensive concerns of business 
and enterprise, or the management of important 
public affairs ; — all these are of mighty efficacy, 
as long as you enjoy tolerable health, for avert- 
ing the admonitions of a more solemn interest. 
On every side to which you turn, the " god of 
this world" has disposed his enchantments, that 
you should not see the objects which are making 
signs to you by authority of Heaven, nor hear 
their call. And you are pleased to have it so ; 
as the people of former ages, when that specta- 
cle of rare appearance in their hemisphere, which 
they denominated the -blazing star, was regard- 
ed as of direful presage, were glad that an un- 
broken array of clouds should vail the sky, to 
yield them a temporary but thoughtless allevia- 
tion of their alarm, by concealing the dreaded 
phenomenon. If you could resolve on an exer- 
cise of reflection, to ascertain the causes of the 
gratification you feel in these pomps, diversities, 
luxuries, and occupations, you would find a very 
material one to be, that they save you from any 
serious and prolonged recognition of the Al- 
mighty, and of those great subjects inseparable 
from the idea of him. You would instantly be 
sensible that you are so estranged from him ; 
and would discover that you have been thanking 
these beguilers for assisting you to be so. 



166 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

But is not this a most perverted and perillous 
condition? With the Ml consent of your will, 
you suffer this worldly grandeur, this prosperity, 
these quickly successive and variegated gratifica- 
tions, to have the effect, that whatever is to be 
dreaded from the justice and disapprobation of a 
God neglected and despised, approaches still 
more and more near, and hovers imminently 
over you, without being seen or apprehended; 
as the monarch of Babylon's sumptuous revelry 
was the very cause that the destroyer of all that 
triumph could come so close without being per- 
ceived. Think also of the circumstance, that 
while you are placed, by the possession of the 
high advantages (that is, what may and ought 
to be advantages) of your situation, under a most 
cogent responsibility to God for their use, you 
suffer this very possession to render you thought- 
less of this responsibility. What will prove to 
be the guilt and the consequence of such con- 
duct towards him? To complete the estimate 
of such a condition, consider how certainly all 
this pageant of your pride, pomp, and luxury, 
will break up, and be gone, when the angel of 
death alights by you, to send your spirits, dives- 
ted, disenchanted, but unprepared to their great 
account. A funeral parade over your dust will 
seem as if expressly designed in mockery of your 
past grandeur, by celebrating your ejection from 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 167 

it; and will serve your equally thoughtless suc- 
cessors for a variety in the exhibition of their 
pride and state. 

In all the ranks of society, (below the high- 
est,) there are very many actuated by a restless 
ambition to obtain the notice and conceded ac- 
quaintance of those above them. In turning 
our observations, for a moment, to persons of 
this description, we might appeal to their own 
consciousness of what it is that they allow to 
take precedence of all thoughts and solicitudes 
relating to God. There is sometimes stealing 
upon you a sentiment of mortification, that your 
lot had not been cast in a higher rank, and that it 
is in vain to think of attaining the envied station. 
Fortunately for your self-complacency, you can 
turn this chagrin into an active spirit for gain- 
ing the next best object in your esteem, that is, 
to be on such terms with those above you as 
shall gratify both your pride and your vanity. 
You aspire eagerly to be acknowledged by them, 
and to be seen to be acknowledged, as persons of 
some account in their estimation. You work 
assiduously, by manners expressive of deference, 
by adulation, when you can venture to offer it, 
by officious and voluntary services, and some of 
you by gross servility, to purchase their favour- 
able attention. And when a degree of it is con- 
ferred on you, in a manner not too palpably that 
of condescension, (though you are net, perhaps, 



168 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

very fastidious on this point.) you are elated as 
if you had acquired some great accession of in- 
trinsic worth. You solicitously watch for still 
more unequivocal tokens of the gracious dispo- 
sition, and for occasions of putting yourselves in 
the way to receive them. And the progress of 
your success is probably marked by a more state- 
ly or a more condescending manner, assumed to- 
ward your inferiors. Some of you, of prouder 
temperament, and vigorous talent, disdaining all 
the servile expedients, aspire to command the 
estimation and respectful attention of the higher 
favourites of fortune. And when you have in 
a measure done so, you exult as if it were some 
grand victory. It appears to you a splendid 
achievement to have conquered possession, by 
means of solely personal qualifications, of a 
ground where you stand on nearly an equality, 
in effect, with persons whose honours and im- 
portance in the world may consist alone in the 
splendour of their external circumstances. You 
may affect to depreciate this extrinsic impor- 
tance of theirs ; but you are vastly gratified by 
that kind of community with them to which 
your abilities and exertions have mounted you. 
— Thus, " man worships man," as a method in- 
stinctively adopted in aid of each man's worship 
of himself. 

Now this habitual passion and labour to real- 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 169 

ise some imaginary element of well-being in the 
good graces of your superior fellow- mortals, may 
have so debased the temper of your spirit, that 
any admonition suggested to withdraw and raise 
your thoughts toward Him who is supreme to 
judge, to bless, and to confer honour, may be like 
calling the attention of an uncultivated rustic 
to the sublimities of astronomy. The infinite 
greatness of God above all things, the obligation 
of a constant reference to him, the honour that 
comes from him, the duty of aspiring to be ac- 
knowledged by him with approbation, and the 
glory of possessing it, — all these are but feeble 
glimpses on your apprehension. But this is a 
degraded and guilty predicament. Endeavour 
to think what it must be, to be valuing your- 
selves just so much the more, in proportion as 
you succeed in prevailing on these earthly demi- 
gods of your prostrate superstition to accept, and 
sparingly reward, the homage which you refuse 
to the Almighty. Think what it is to watch 
and wait with anxiety, with manoeuvres of in- 
sinuation, with patience resolutely maintained, 
or impatience unavailingly indulged, and even 
with sacrifices and self-denial, for looks and ex- 
pressions of complaisance, acknowledging you as 
not unknown or despised, from creatures of your 
own kind, possibly of little worth, and insignifi- 
cant but for their appendages of fortune, so soon 



170 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

to be resigned ; while you are totally regardless 
of that sovereign Power who is inviting you to 
the honour of being acquainted with Him. And 
when your vanity is gratified, in thinking how 
you stand exhibited in the view of other men as 
enjoying a measure of the dearly-bought privi- 
lege, one serious reflection might expose to you 
what ignominy inexpressible it is, to be elated at 
appearing before a portion of society with the 
distinction of some flattering attention from your 
superiors, and to be perfectly indifferent in what 
account you shall be seen to be held by the Judge 
of the world, when men and angels will be the 
witnesses of the estimation. 

Men of the world might be addressed on one 
other very general characteristic of their spirit 
and proceeding. Many of you are zealously in- 
tent on the advancement and amply endowed 
establishment of your families ; ambitiously com- 
passing for them, at whatever moral cost or ha- 
zard, the utmost quantity of the materials of 
prosperity. Under the consciousness, though 
little and reluctantly brought into any distinct- 
ness of thought, that your own tenure is but for 
a very limited term, the mind instinctively seeks 
to escape into any factitious mode of extending 
the interest of moral existence, and yields to 
some undefined sort of deception, as if in your 
surviving descendants you were to retain some 






TO MEN 'OP THE WORLD. 171 

kind sympathetic life yourselves. In this inig- 
matical feeling, for yourselves and them, you 
study and scheme and toil, to place them on the 
most advantageous ground, or in the way to at- 
tain it. And this being effected, the great busi- 
ness for them is accomplished ! How often we 
have been struck with wonder in observing some 
of you, dwelling with delight and pride on the 
prosperous introduction into life, and the fine 
prospects, of one and another branch of your fa- 
mily, and evidently with an entire inadvertence to 
any greater concern affecting their welfare. Se- 
cure the primary object of their passing through 
life in a handsome style, in fair repute, and with 
plenty of the world's accommodations at their 
command ; and that other affair, of their being 
accountable to God, of its being their chief busi- 
ness in life to be his servants, may be left as an 
insignificant matter, about which you do not, 
and they need not, take any trouble. You are 
thus willing to be destitute of religion virtually 
beyond your individual capacity, and to take on 
you the weight of responsibility for its exclusion 
from your relative sphere. You are consenting, 
as it were, to be irreligious both in yourselves, 
and in those who are to survive you; saying, 
Let us form a family compact for the prolonga- 
tion of impiety; a patriarch and a posterity 
estranged from the Father in heaven. But thus 



172 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

to render yourselves expressly their authorities 
for living without God, is it not a most sinister 
and fearful office that you perform for them ? 
When they shall find that all you have wished 
and schemed for them 3 and incited them to at- 
tain, has left their main interest abandoned to 
ruin ; that paternal care has operated systema- 
tically to betray them out of all recollection and 
all favour of the mightiest Patron, what will be 
the language of the thanks they will return you? 
And think what it will be, to be associated with 
them in the natural result of this present es- 
trangement from him, in a sad exile, at last, 
from his presence. And see, in this condition, 
and in that prospect, how alienation from God 
destroys the value of that one affection which is 
always represented as the most genuine and 
faithful of human charities. 

These exemplifications, with the questions 
and censures on them, have been attempted in a 
form to lead you, men of the world, into such 
reflection as would verify to your own minds, 
that your prevailing spirit actually does disown 
your relations to God, that it is irreligion ; 
and to expose to you that such a condition is 
fatally wrong. They have represented that 
religion chiefly as it is apparent in reference 
to the more commanding and awful characters 
in which the Divine Being is to be acknowledged, 



TO MEtf OF THE WORLD. 173 

as supremely great and powerful, as present with 
perfect intelligence through all existence, as the 
observer and judge of all moral agents. We 
should have more distinctly admonished you 
to take account how you are affected towards 
him in his character of sovereign goodness, in 
which you might have access to find infinite re- 
sources for felicity. Reflect what it is that you 
do, in declining all communication with him in 
this relation. In a certain possible state of 
your spirit toward him, you would have the 
sense of his attention resting on you, directly 
and individually, as a favoured creature, with 
emanations of benignity which would breathe a 
deep emphatic vitality into your soul. And from 
all the objects and interests which would di- 
versely engage your thoughts and affections, 
you would return at intervals to be sensibly in 
the presence of a Divine Friend, and realize it 
still again as both the delight and the energy of 
your existence. Think, then, what it is to be so 
compacted and consubstantial, as it were, with 
the world, as in effect to say, Nothing of all this 
is mine, and for nothing of all this do I care. I 
have no adaptation nor desire to reciprocate 
sentiments with any being of higher order than 
myself. If God do really offer himself for such 
communication with men, I must forego the 
privilege, of which I could have no possession 



174 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

without I know not what vast change in my 
spirit and habits. But, indeed, I have no con- 
ception of such a mystical source of delight. 
How should any one receive tokens of special 
favour, responsive to his own emotions and aspi- 
rations, from a Being who never appears nor 
speaks to the world, and whose concern is with 
the wide creation as a whole ? However it may 
be, such a spiritual sympathy is not for my ex- 
perience; and I must content myself with such 
good as I can draw from intercourse with the 
objects in the scene around me. With these is 
my soul in communion; they are my happiness; 
and do not disturb me with warnings of what it 
will be to go into the presence of God as a 
stranger when I must leave them. I hope that, 
in some way or other, I shall have sufficiently 
made peace with him, against the time when I 
am to find myself present with him, and no 
longer with them. 

If your devotedness to the world be thus a 
fatal alienation from God, it is comparatively 
but little to add, that it places you out of frater- 
nity of feeling and character with the best and 
noblest of mankind. This may generally not 
cause you much mortification ; and, lest it should 
do so, you have recourse to the expedient of de- 
preciating the religious character, as exemplified 



TO MEK OF THE WORLD. 175 

in those who professedly bear it. But your at- 
tention must have been sometimes arrested by 
such examples, on record, or in the living world, 
as defied your self- defensive malice. You have 
beheld a real, unquestionable devotion to God, 
to truth, to holiness, and to another world. You 
have observed men living in habitual acknow- 
ledgment of the Divine presence and authority, 
preserving a faithful conscience, and obeying it 
in scenes of temptation — maintaining fidelity to 
their high principle, through all changes of sea- 
son and condition — amidst the troubles of their 
lot, deriving consolation from above and from 
hereafter — throughout their mortal course still 
looking forward to the end, and terminating it 
in the assurance, that they were " dying in the 
Lord." There was left you no cause or power 
to doubt that this was all genuine/ and you felt 
self-convicted of baseness, if you affected to ques- 
tion it. You were also constrained to admit, 
that these are the true exemplifications of reli- 
gion, and that, therefore, all cavils raised against 
it from the unworthy character of many of its 
ostensible adherents, are wickedly dishonest. To 
say that but few professed religionists exhibit 
this combination of qualities in such high ex- 
cellence, is saying nothing, unless you could as- 
sert that such excellence, when it does exist, is 
something more, or something else, than religion. 



176 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

It is a matter of great difficulty to decide 
what degree of deficiency of such a character 
may not be incompatible with the essential of 
personal religion. But at all events, here are 
placed in your view those whom religion has 
rendered the very best of the human race. Nor 
can you evade the point for which we cite them, 
by saying they were recluses and ascetics and 
therefore inappropriate examples for any use of 
condemnatory comparison with you, who are ne- 
cessarily occupied with the business of the world. 
For many of them were much and variously em- 
ployed in that business, and showed how religion 
may be mingled with secular interest and trans- 
actions, so as to retain its own brightness and 
throw lustre on them. 

Now, we are confident you cannot deny that 
there are moments of transient light on your 
mind, when the conviction comes upon you, that 
this is the worthiest, noblest, most admirable 
order of human character, however indistinctly 
you may apprehend some of the most refined 
principles on which it is formed, and however 
disposed you may be to the imputation of mys- 
ticism and excess. On any question arising in 
you reflections, who are the most truly estimable 
and dignified, the most wise and the most safe, 
your thoughts involuntarily glance toward this 
class of men, and you cannot make them fix on 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 177 

any other. They are the honourable and select 
of mankind, the "people favoured of the Lord," 
and Balaam cannot blast or degrade them for 
you. 

And shall it be your only regret that you 
cannot reduce them to your own level ? Would 
you deem it a desirable thing that they could 
be re-converted (such as are living) to that 
worldly character which now separates you so 
far from their community ; so that there should 
be none to shine in contrast with you, as exem- 
plifying the possible glory of that nature which 
you degrade ? Eeflect soberly, whether, if you 
did see and feel and act like the best of those 
men, it would not be a most happy change from 
your present condition. Would it not be happy 
that the state of your mind corresponded to one 
inspiring sentiment of these men, — that they 
have a Master in heaven whom it is delightful 
to serve; to another, that no faithful effort or 
sacrifice will, as to its reward, be lost ; to ano- 
ther, that every victory over sin surpasses the 
value of all worldly successes or triumphs ; to 
another, that their guilt is pardoned through the 
divine mercy; to another, that they, and all their 
concerns are under a sovereign guardianship 
which can never err or fail ; and that, therefore, 
in every juncture they have the mightiest power 
in the universe at hand for their assistance ; and 



178 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

to still another, that one sensible interest in 
transacting the successive affairs assigned them 
in this world, is in the circumstance, that each 
one accomplished has carried them so much 
farther toward quitting the whole for something 
better ? Comprehend in the account whatever 
other things form a part of the difference which 
religion makes between them and you; allow 
this difference to verify itself to you as a reality; 
and then say, whether you can be fully content 
and self-complacent in standing thus dissociated. 
Estimate impartially any favourite worldly ob- 
ject, pursued or possessed, and think whether 
that would not be well surrendered to place you 
in a community of situation with these Chris- 
tian spirits. In a lucid hour, you cannot but 
perceive, that, by being associated with them in 
congeniality of feeling and action, you would be 
in harmony with those grand laws and relations 
of your existence with which you are now at 
variance, and often at war. Those bonds of 
connection with the highest objects, adamantine 
bonds, which with all your striving you cannot 
break, but which you now feel, when recognized 
at all, as fatal chains to what you cannot love, 
and to a doom which you dread and cannot es- 
cape, would then be vital conductors through 
which you would communicate with heaven. 
United to that assembly, you would stand on a 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 179 

ground where beams descend from the eternal 
sun, where angels visit, where afflictions are 
turned to blessings, where death is divested of 
his terrors. You would be able to say, with 
cordial emphasis, Wherever their souls shall be, 
there let mine be for ever. 

On the other hand, look at the men with 
whom you are now conjoined and assimilated. 
As your own men of the world, the models to 
which you conform yourselves, the class with 
whose destiny you are committing your own, it 
might be presumed they should have your ap- 
probation, your confidence, your sincere affec- 
tion. But is it so ? Take an honest account 
of what you think of them, in moments when 
you are drawn a little aside from the bustle in 
which you are mingled with them, and when, 
for a short time, you feel your league with them 
somewhat relaxed. At such times, you will 
have found yourself looking at them with a cold, 
keen, judicial inspection ; recalling to mind their 
conduct toward one another, or yourself; ob- 
serving their motives, and admitting an estimate 
of these men of your preference and fraternity. 
The narrowness of their purposes, their selfish- 
ness, the world-hardened cast of their feelings, 
and their unsound principles, stood palpably ex- 
posed in your view. Confess how often you have 
been thrown into a very different train of think- 



180 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

ing of them from that of considering them as 
your friends, your own chosen favourite class. 
Confess that you do not and cannot feel a gen- 
uine esteem for them, not to say affection or 
veneration. You do not repose a tranquil con- 
fidence in them. You have to watch and guard 
and surround yourselves with every precaution. 
With many of them you find yourselves in un- 
disguised competition; and with your very allies 
and coadjutors you dare not remit the exercise 
of a silent vigilance on their movements, and all 
the indications of their dispositions and designs, 
— a vigilance which, you need not doubt, is ex- 
ercised on you in return. What invaluable be- 
ings you are to one another, if you be right in 
this reciprocal distrust ! 

Even as to religion, careless as you are about 
it, you occasionally feel a certain indistinct im- 
pression, that some other worldly men are too 
careless; especially when you observe any of 
them in declining health, or far advanced in age, 
as eagerly intent on worldly pursuits as if they 
had the assurance of half a century of life before 
them. You could not avoid some perception 
of incongruity in this, which has betrayed you 
into the expression, It is really time for that 
man to begin to think a little of other concerns. 
It may very possibly have happened to you, to 
be disgusted, and almost shocked, to see one of 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 181 

your thorough men of the world resuming all 
his ease, vivacity, and ambition, for playing his 
part in it, with hardly the shortest interval after 
some sad event in his family or nearest connec- 
tions. If such an event brought him an acces- 
sion of temporal advantage, he waited, perhaps, 
barely "one little month," to rush, with the im- 
pulse of his new forces, and the exultation of 
having acquired them, into the busiest or the 
gayest scenes of life. Supposing, again, that 
you have been dangerously ill, and visited by one 
of your fraternity, you have seen what a man of 
the world can do in the way of consolation. 
What was the balm which that physician ap- 
plied ? If you could not believe the assurances 
which he made to you (whether he thought so or 
not,) that you would recover, what resource was 
presented to you besides ? 

In short, you will not deny, that if there could 
be given you what you could believe to be an 
undeceptive presage, that though associated with 
the men of the world now, you should not be so 
hereafter, it would please you exceedingly. We 
mean, it would do so at those more thoughtful 
seasons, when the real quality of your worldly 
association, its heartlessness, its want of mutual 
approbation, its poverty of the means of allevia- 
ting sorrow, and its destitution of moral dignity, 
are exposed, in a degree, to your reluctant ap- 



182 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

prehension; and when to all this is added, that 
its advantages and pleasures^ whatever they may 
be, are limited) both in fact and hope, to a dim- 
inutive portion of your existence. This closing 
consideration throws a deeply melancholy char- 
acter over the whole vast spectacle of your mul- 
titudes and activities. A crowd of human beings 
in prodigious ceaseless stir to keep the dust of 
the earth in motion, and then to sink into it, 
while all beyond is darkness and desolation ! It 
is as if a great army, appointed to march on 
some magnificent enterprise of distant conquest, 
should confine themselves to waste all their en- 
ergy in an idle tumult of strifes and revellings in 
their camp, and obstinately stay on the ground 
to perish away, and be interred there. 

On a whole view of these representations it 
must needs appear, that, in your devotion to the 
world, you are losing the grand object of your 
existence. This is the plain brief sentence on 
your course of life. And it is most striking to 
think how insignificantly it may sound to you, 
whose guilt and calamity it pronounces. Will 
you say what combination of words that you 
could hear, would pass more lightly off? You 
have heard it, and, perhaps within a few minutes 
after, retained in your consciousness no trace of 
any thing impressive having been made sensible 
to your mind. Are you not tempted to repeat 



TO ME^ OF THE WORLD. 183 

it, for the mere curiosity of observing how much 
at ease you can be, with what seems of such for- 
midable import; as if you were playing with a 
snake, rendered harmless by the deprivation of 
its fangs, or by your possessing the Egyptian's 
charms against them? Repeat the sentence 
which affirms you are disowning and losing the 
great purpose for which you are sent into the 
world, and smile at the seriousness which thinks 
it an expression of fearful meaning. Say, you 
are sensible of nothing lost, as long as the good 
things of the world are gained, "Thou sayest 
I am rich, and encreased with goods, and have 
need of nothing ; and knowest not that thou art 
wretched and miserable and poor and blind and 
naked." It is not, however, that you are in- 
capable of being profoundly affected by the short 
proposition in words of something disastrous in 
your situation. The few words that should an- 
nounce to you that your house, or other valuable 
property was in flames : or that (supposing you 
a trafficker by sea) a ship, in which you had an 
important adventure, had been last seen driving, 
in a shattered state, at the mercy of a storm ; or 
the judgment positively signified to you on a 
topical disease, that you could be relieved only 
by a frightful amputation ; or the most laconic 
whisper that should apprise you of a design form- 
ed against your life, — would produce such an in- 



184 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

tense excitement, as if all your strongest past 
emotions, extinct and almost forgotten, came, 
as by a general resurrection, again to life, com- 
bined in one tumultuous alarm. And yet the 
melancholy truth, pressed upon you in admoni- 
tion, that the primary object of life, the grand 
venture and value of your existence, is thus far 
lost, and in the course to be finally lost, through 
your devotion to the world, may leave your mind 
unmoved, to await the stronger impression of 
the next inconsiderable temporal misfortune. 

But you are awaiting also, little as you may 
apprehend or care for it, impressions of another 
order, and from another cause. They are re- 
served, most inevitably to come, after a certain 
succession, longer or shorter, of emotions from 
ordinary causes shall have had their times, and 
be gone by. A thoughtful religious mind often 
perceives intimations concerning you, prophetic 
images, as it were mingling with the sight of 
your persons, while it beholds you thus absorbed 
in worldly interest, and insensible of what you 
are doing in throwing away an infinitely greater. 
That man, and that other, how little do they 
care that all the powers of their being, and 
periods of their time, are useless for the noblest 
and the absolutely indispensable purpose of life ! 
How content that what they are acquiring should 
be at the cost of what they are losing! How 



TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 185 

easily they can say, in effect, " Get thee behind 
me," to any thing that would tell them what it 
is that they are sacrificing to their idol, and 
warn them of the consequence ! But to each of 
them an hour is coming, at some certain dis- 
tance in approaching time, when they will awake 
from the infatuation, to the surprise and dismay 
of seeing that their life has been so far in vain. 
They will look back to behold it, with all its 
fair and precious possibilities, blasted and deso- 
lated by their having passed over it. They will 
look back to measure how far it might have 
carried them on toward the possession of incor- 
ruptible treasures, unfading honours, an eternal 
inheritance; and then to acknowledge the mise- 
rable fact, that it has not advanced them one 
stage or step. It will come, — the hour which 
is charged with the destination to afflict them. 
There may be temporal grievances or misfor- 
tunes, affixed by divine appointment to certain 
parts of the time coming on ; but infallibly there 
is, somewhere in the train, the hour commission- 
ed to bear the yet unkindled element which will 
flame against their consciences. Will it be while 
there are yet to follow days of protracted grace, 
and possible " newness of life ;" or will it be the 
conclusion of their time, and lighten on them 
only that they may read the sentence of an in- 
evitable doom ? Or is it the appointed moment, 



186 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

of that awakening to the conviction that life has 
been expended in vain, reserved to come after 
the last of the hours on earth ? — With such 
thoughts the serious observer looks towards fu- 
turity on your account, while you are heedlessly, 
and perhaps you call it pleasantly, occupying 
your life in the very manner which will bring 
at length this conviction, that you have slighted 
and lost its chief end. 

Allow us to remind you of so obvious a con- 
sideration, as that of the rapid passing away of 
your life. A large proportion of you, of the 
character in question, have reached its middle 
period ; many are going down into its decline ; 
some have the certainty of being near its termina- 
tion. And you cannot but have been often struck 
with the reflection, how soon each period of it, 
which had been before you, was gone into the 
past. Have you never felt an impulse to quar • 
rel with time for leaving you so fast, after you had 
perhaps been impatient for some particular por- 
tion of it to arrive ? But it would neither stay 
to be your companion, nor slacken to receive 
your reproach. It seems to come past you but 
for the purpose of stealing away your life ; each 
day, each hour, taking off a share of that as its 
spoil. Observe how the theft and diminution 
are incessantly going on, while you are plan- 
ning, or consulting, or executing, while you are 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 1S7 

striving or relaxing, exulting in success, or fret- 
ting at failure. The one continual fact is, that 
life is speeding off. 

Now, surely, it is high time to adopt a deter- 
mined policy with respect to that which, while 
of immense importance to you, is thus continu- 
ally deserting you. And the right policy is, not 
to attach yourselves, as your main object of in- 
terest, to any thing to which life cannot be at- 
tached and fixed in abiding conjunction. In 
other words, how is any thing practically of 
value, but as you can have life for its prosecu- 
tion, possession, and use ? There are in the 
world riches, "respects of honour," amusements, 
gratification of curiosity, delights of the senses, 
what you please. If you could command life 
to delay, or to take a fixed state, so that you 
might effectually appropriate these, and unite 
them, as it were, to your being, that were some- 
thing. But by the rapid departure of life, that 
is to say, of yourselves, you are denied the essen- 
tial condition of making them yours. You but 
snatch at them in passing, hold them for a mo- 
ment, are carried away from them ; leaving 
them to make a similar mockery of offering 
themselves to the next coveters in the ever-tran- 
sient succession. If you, believing yourselves 
to be immortal beings, can be content with this ; 
if you are willing to place your all in things of 



188 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

which your fleeting life allows you to try the 
good but for a moment, how mysterious is it 
that such beings should have come into the 
world to be so befooled ! 

You will hardly be so unwitting as to retort, 
that neither can life be stayed, and rendered a 
durable condition, for taking and holding the 
good of the spiritual interests, any more than of 
these temporal ones. This would be true but in 
so narrow a sense, as not to be worth the say- 
ing. For the cases are infinitely different. It 
is in the nature of those higher interests, that 
they belong to this life only as a brief prepara- 
tory term, the great scene of their enjoyment 
necessarily being hereafter. The main princi- 
ple of the aspirant's connection with them here, 
is avowedly not that of possession, but of antici- 
pation : and in that anticipation he sees com- 
bined with them an endless life, as his condi- 
tion for a full possession of them. So that he 
may be more than content, he may be grati- 
fied, that the present life is so fleeting ; because, 
in being so, it hastens him toward that where 
the circumstance of transiency, inseparable from 
the experience of a created being, will seem 
lost in the character of permanence. For, 
though he must possess his felicities in a succes- 
sion of duration, the assured eternity of that 
duration will infuse a certain effect of the per- 
manence of the whole to be perceived in every 



TO MEtf OF THE WORLD. 189 

successive point ; thus precluding the character 
of evanescence from the series perpetually pass- 
ing. In contrast to all this, your objects belong 
exclusively to time, and to the very short time 
of your life on earth. And therefore, the speedy 
pace of life is the rapid parting from all you 
are possessing, or endeavouring to possess. And 
the possession itself, during its brief continu- 
ance, is turned to vanity, by your knowing that 
this pressing haste, with which you are carried 
away from each particular of it, is just so much 
fatal speed toward your losing it all. 

But the consideration of the rapid progress of 
life toward a close is enforced on you by more 
familiar and palpable forms of admonition. 
There must often be brought to your remem- 
brance events and circumstances in your expe- 
rience, which appear as receding far into the 
past. Can these recollections be always unac- 
companied by the obvious reflection, If all the 
time since then be so much taken out of my life, 
how reduced must be the remainder ! and, if 
the interval between that time and this, in one 
sense so wide, appears to have been very soon 
passed over, can I be reckoning on a very slow 
movement, which shall afford leisure for all 
manner of occupations or diversions, in passing 
over any space that can be yet in reserve for me 
to traverse ? Perhaps some of you are conscious 



190 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

of a feeling occasionally arising, which would 
shape itself into the wish that you could be young 
again. Is this sentiment dismissed without re- 
minding you what progress you have made, and 
what despatch you are making, in the journey 
of life ? Some of you see your descendants al- 
ready busy in the worldly career ; can you have 
evaded the suggestion, what period of your life 
it must be, to which this stage in theirs is paral- 
lel ! with this thought further, how soon they 
will, if they live, have reached the same point in 
theirs as you have in yours ; and where will you 
be then ? When sometimes a tempting occasion 
is presented to you, of embarking in a new 
scheme, the thought will come over you, like one 
of the cold winds precursory of winter, that you 
are gone too far for any reasonable prospect of 
living long enough to see such a project through 
to its desired result. You are compelled to a 
brief reluctant computation, of about what stage 
in its prosecution might very probably be the 
last in the course of your activities under the 
sun. Some of you may be seen building a house, 
for your more respectable and commodious resi- 
dence in the latter part of your life. When, in 
such a case, we have observed the care and vigi- 
lance exerted to ensure that every part and ad- 
justment be firm and durable, the question would 
occur, Is this person, so careful about the sound- 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 191 

ness of material, and security of fixture of each 
beam, each board, each carved ornament, — is he 
not silently visited by any thought of where he 
shall be, long before the time that the structure 
will show any signs of decay, long before the 
time at which it would vex him to foresee there 
would be any such signs ? When you are plant- 
ing young trees, for fruit or agreeable shade, can 
you avoid the reflection, how likely it is, that 
before these trees will be matured to their full 
productiveness, or be amply spread and thicken- 
ed round the dwelling, or over the walks, you 
will have entered another kind of shade ? And 
then, " whose shall those things be which you 
have provided " ? 

"While exemplifications of so special a cast 
will bear directly on some of you only, there are 
many things of a more common kind, which 
would admonish any of you who would practise 
a little reflection. Consider how often you fail 
to complete what you had in intention limited 
to a certain time ; and then you say the time 
was gone too soon for you to accomplish it. You 
appropriate a portion of time, to be taken from 
business to some pleasurable pursuit ; and how 
soon you have to say, It is gone like a dream ! 
The great changes of the year, or some marked 
point of it, the anniversary of your nativity, for 
instance, return upon you by surprise : It is but 



192 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED ' 

as yesterday, you exclaim, since this was here 
before. The appointed terms for transactions 
and settlements in the course of your affairs are 
here upon you again, when you seem to have 
but just got rid of the last. Some of you have 
become afraid of pledging yourselves to do one 
thing and another, from experience that the 
time is apt to be gone before you can make any 
effectual movements. Many of you have begun 
to remark, that it seems to go faster now than 
it did in your earlier life. Some of you, per- 
haps, occasionally fall into a mood of thought, 
in which you number the years between your 
present age and the farthest term to which it is 
in any way reasonable, under the most favour- 
able circumstances, to calculate that you may 
live; and then intrudes the idea, that, (even sup- 
posing you assume that you shall have so many 
years of life,) if they shall steal off as fast as an 
equal number of the preceding ones seem to have 
done, you will very soon be at the end. The 
most aged class, if they too must still retain the 
folly of reckoning on the future, unsubdued by 
the certain littleness of their nearly exhausted 
store, may consider, whether even all the infir- 
mities and burdens of the last stage will so re- 
tard the lapse of time, that a very few more 
summers and winters will not quickly have van- 
ished from between them and the exit out of 
life. 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 193 

If things in some analogy to these were exhi- 
bited as the fancied circumstances of a fictitious 
order and condition of moral agents, devised to 
give a strong image of a state of urgency and 
danger, combined with insensibility, the repre- 
sentation would excite no little of that sentiment 
partaking of alarm, which you can feel by sym- 
pathy for even imaginary beings. But you, men 
of the world, know that this is a plain descrip- 
tion of your actual situation. It is yourselves 
who are beset by so many circumstances to ap- 
prise you of the rapidity of the course, by which 
you are passing out of life. And your unhappy 
case is, that you make your life as worthless to 
your true welfare, as it is evanescent in its con- 
tinuance, by rejecting from your care its one 
grand business. You act as if you really had 
understood your existence here and hereafter, 
not to be the same existence; but that the pre- 
sent life was expressly appointed by the Creator 
to be occupied with the matters of this earth ex- 
clusively, that it was to be altogether " of the 
earth, earthy;" and that, for the next, you are 
to be literally created anew, in a different order 
of being, constituted in a similar adaptation to 
be occupied with what there may be in another 
world, and having no reference or relation to the 
previous and probationary state. But if such be 
not the law of your existence, reflect what a fatal 

N 



194 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

proceeding you adopt in so devoting, through 
this life, your soul to this world, that when you 
leave it, you will find the substantial thing that 
remains with you, after all its shadows and de- 
lusions are past, is an unfitness for a better. 

Here we conclude this long course of remon- 
strance. Perhaps you are ready to say, it is a 
rueful and offensive representation, just such as 
a splenetic spirit, which has quarrelled with the 
world, would be gratified to make, in the wish 
to poison the satisfactions of those who have yet 
some cause to regard it as a friend; and who, at 
all events, think it yet too soon to fall into hos- 
tility with themselves. But consider at whose 
cost it will be, that you repel a statement which 
you cannot refute. The truth of the matter goes, 
in reality, no farther off from you for being re- 
jected, any more than the hour of death can be 
deferred by refusing to think of it, or by heed- 
lessness of the solemnity of the prospect. Where 
would be the sense of a man, (if such a case 
could be,) who should turn with impatient dis- 
gust from the sight of characteristic morbid ap- 
pearances shown in a delineation, and at the 
same time be well content to bear in his own 
person the disease itself? That the preceding 
description of your state is in substance the truth, 
we may challenge you to deny ; to deny, that is 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 195 

to say, upon such serious and honest considera- 
tion as you cannot refuse, without being guilty 
of the most deplorable trifling — a trifling which 
you will in due time meet with something that 
will avenge. And we may appeal to your own 
reason, thus exercised, what you would think of 
a doctrine or a teacher, that would consent to 
leave you satisfied with a plan of life, which, for 
the sake of this world, renounces the good, and 
braves the evil, of the world to come. 

But, though the representation, thus far, be 
of a menacing character, all is not dark. As 
we have seen in a pictured view of Babylon, sup- 
posed on the eve of its fall, there remains one 
portion of the hemisphere, and one celestial lu- 
minary, not yet obscured by the portentous shade. 
While no colours can throw too gloomy an aspect 
on the condition in which you have been de- 
scribed, there shines on your view still that great 
resource, to which all this series of what may 
have seemed austere reprehensions, has been 
aimed to constrain your attention. And if you 
could be made to apprehend the importance 
which there really is in the considerations so 
inadequately conceived and expressed, you would 
be awakened to wonder and gratitude, that, after 
so constant and systematic a rejection of the so- 
vereign good, you should not now find " a great 
gulf fixed between it and you." On your side 



196 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

of that tremendous chasm there is still Religion, 
accessible to you in all its blessings of deliver- 
ance, peace, and security for hereafter. You 
are still on that favoured ground, where you are 
invited by a God of mercy, a Redeemer with his 
atoning sacrifice, a Divine Spirit with all powers 
and operations of assistance, to enter yet at last 
into the possession of that which will be a glo- 
rious portion when all you have been striving 
with the world to gain will vanish in dust and 
smoke. But be warned again, that the time is 
passing, and a very short persistance in your 
folly may make it too late. 

Shall we, in concluding, suppose that some of 
you may be disposed to answer these exhorta- 
tions in some such manner as this? " But what 
can we do? We cannot make ourselves religious. 
Though we should admit that all this is true and 
of the last importance, we cannot, for that com- 
mand and compel our dispositions, our affections, 
the settled habitude of our minds, to change into 
the new order required. What can we do ? " 
The answer to this should be appropriate to the 
temper in which it is spoken. We have heard 
of instances of expressions like these being ut- 
tered evidently in a spirit of impious and des- 
perate carelessness. There was no real concern 
about the subject; but a determined addiction to 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 197 

the world, and to so much of sin as that should 
involve, a wilful avoidance of reflection, a stupid 
and defying indifference to consequences; and 
all this taking to itself an excuse, or almost a 
justification, from the moral impotence of our 
nature. The man was in effect saying, As I am 
resolved to pursue my course, it were a satisfac- 
tion to believe, and I will believe, that I could 
do no otherwise; and as I am to fulfil my des- 
tiny, the less I trouble myself with thinking about 
it the better. Now, to a person who should re- 
ply to religious admonitions in this disposition 
of mind, we should deem it utterly trifling and 
useless to offer any pleading of speculatively 
theological or of metaphysical argument. The 
reasoning faculty of such a man is a wretched 
slave, that will not, and dare not, listen to one 
word in presence and in contravention of his 
passions and will. The only thing there would 
be any sense in attempting, would be to press on 
him some strong images of the horror of such a 
deliberate self- consignment to destruction, and 
of the monstrous enormity of taking a kind of 
comfort in his approach to the pit, from the cir- 
cumstance that a principle in his nature leads 
him to it; just as if, because there is that in him 
which impels him to perdition, it would there- 
fore not be he that will perish. Till some awful 
blast smite on his fears, his reason and con- 
science will be unavailing. 



198 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

If he be guarded on the side of his fears, by 
entertaining a light opinion of that consequence 
on which he is so precipitating himself; should 
he say, that it certainly would be a dreadful 
thing thus resolutely to go forward toward it, 
and a flagrantly absurd one thus to satisfy him- 
self in doing so, if he had any such appalling 
estimate of that future ruin as religious doctrine 
affects to enforce; but that he believes this 
threatening to be a prodigious exaggeration, — 
we have only to reply, that, as he has not yet 
seen the world of retribution, he is to take his 
estimate of its awards from the declarations of 
Him who knows what they are, and that it is at 
his peril he assumes to entertain any other. If 
any one answer to this, that he does not believe 
in the existence of any such declarations, he is 
not one of the persons we are meaning to address. 

But some of you will make the supposed re- 
ply— "What can we do?" in a less depraved 
temper of feeling. We will suppose, that you 
are not quite indifferent on the subject, that you 
seriously admit the necessity of religion, that you 
feel some uneasiness at your estrangement from 
it, that, in short, you wish you could be religious, 
and in this spirit somewhat despondingly put the 
question. For you we have a plain short an- 
swer; — indeed, we have anticipated this in some 
preceding part of the discourse. You can de- 



TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 199 

liberately apply yourselves to a serious, honest, 
prolonged, repeated consideration of the subject. 
Do not incur the shame, for one moment, of pre- 
tending to doubt whether you can do this. On 
any one of your worldly matters of importance, 
you know that you can fix your thoughts atten- 
tively, long and again ; you can severely examine 
in what manner it is connected with your in- 
terests, can weigh the reasons for and against, 
and look forward to near and more distant con- 
sequences. And you can do all this with re- 
spect to religion. Do you allege that, the sub- 
ject being a strange and hitherto foreign one to 
your thoughts, and also presenting itself to you 
with a disquieting and reproachful aspect, your 
minds are strongly inclined to escape from be- 
holding it ? What then ? You can think again 
of the absolute necessity of considering it, and 
can compel them back to confront it once more, 
and still again. You can recollect that nothing 
will be gained, and all will be lost, by ceasing to 
think of it. You can reflect that, if you dismiss 
it now, because it does not please you, it will in- 
fallibly return upon you ere long to please you 
still less; and will return ultimately in such im- 
perative force, that it can no more be evaded or 
dismissed. 

Perhaps there may be some of you who will 
complain, that, notwithstanding sincere and 



200 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

considerable efforts to this purpose, you find 
that the subject does not, and seems as if it 
would not take effectual hold on your spirits ; 
that you cannot feel it to have that importance 
which you know it to have. And what then ? 
again we reply. Are you going to make this 
a reason for suffering your minds to withdraw 
from the subject and let it go — the subject which 
cannot go without abandoning you to the do- 
minion of death? The question, whether to 
yield to this obstinate defect of sensibility, is the 
critical point of your contest with the deadly 
power of evil within you and without you. 
Yield, and all will hasten to ruin. But, surely, 
the terror of such a hazard and such an alter- 
native, or the clear conviction at least that you 
ought to feel terror at it, must incite you to per- 
severing and more earnest efforts. Look at it, 
dwell on it, and see whether a more protracted 
and intense consideration of it will cause or suf- 
fer your resolution to remit. That it should so 
remit, is hardly conceivable of any rational be- 
ing. But if it even did so remit, that circum- 
stance itself would bring a new and frightful 
phenomenon to rouse the spirit which had such 
a consciousness, and excite it to call for all com- 
passionate powers and agencies to come to its 
rescue. 

And here you are to be admonished, that you 



TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 201 

cannot feel that you are faithfully making the 
required exertion, unless you have recourse to 
the most approved means for rendering it effec- 
tual. You cannot answer it to God or your 
conscience, that you are doing justice to your 
souls, in this their dangerous crisis, unless you 
have the resolution to withdraw yourselves as 
much as possible from trifling company; to seize 
from your secular occupations some portions of 
your time for solemn thought ; to forego some 
recreations, not perhaps sinful in themselves, for 
the sake of employing the time on the most 
pressing concern in all existence ; to read serious 
books with an effort of your own to inculcate 
their instructions on your minds ; but especially 
to converse with the Word of Life itself. And 
there is yet one more expedient, of obvious duty 
and practicability, and superlative in efficacy. 
You believe that the Almighty admits his crea- 
tures, and indeed has with endless iteration in- 
vited and commanded them, to express their ne- 
cessities in petitions to him : and that he listens, 
with peculiar favour, to applications for spiritual 
good. You are not afraid to do this ; and you 
are convinced on the strength of innumerable 
promises, and of the merits and intercession of 
Christ, that it would be successful. Though 
there did not appear to be any immediate suc- 
. cess, you believe, you absolutely know, that per- 



202 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 

severing application to Heaven will finally pre- 
vail. You can, with this absolute assurance, 
implore the removal of that odious insensibility, 
that indisposition, that aversion even, which you 
allege as a discouragement from persisting to 
apply yourselves to the all-important subject, 
and feel as a temptation to turn away from it. 
This can be done a thousand times over. It can 
be done as long as the evil and the danger con- 
tinue. And each day of their prolonged con- 
tinuance supplies a stronger and still stronger 
motive, to a more earnest use of the sovereign 
expedient. And again and again we tell you, 
that at each repetition you know, because God 
has declared it, that such application cannot ul- 
timately fail. Let this be done, and you are 
victorious. And oh ! is it not worth while ? "i 
Now, you must acknowledge that this is what 
you can do. But what ! are we about to use a 
language seeming to imply that you are reluctant 
to acknowledge it ? What ! are we supposing 
you would wish it rather proved that you cannot 
perform this simple, efficacious, inestimable ser- 
vice to your immortal spirits ? Is it possible, 
that because the process of discipline is hard, 
(it is confessedly so,) you would be willing to 
find in its impracticability a deliverance from its 
obligation — at the cost, the m inconceivable cost, 
of losing its great object? Is your professed 



TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 203 

thoughtfulness on the subject rather employed 
in trying and feeling the state of your faculties, 
to verify that there are invincible bonds of fate 
around you, than in seeking the intervention of 
that hand which can break all the bondage off? 
Beware that, while you pretend a solicitude for 
your eternal welfare, you be not, in fact, rather 
seeking to make a melancholy provision against 
the event of its failure, in the delusion of finding 
a resource of extenuation in some mysterious 
destiny, or the determination of the Almighty. 

J F. 

Bristol, September, 1825, 



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